"Since the 1960s, we have had an overinfluence of feelings [in spirituality]. Anti-intellectualism was rampant, and it continues to be rampant in a lot of meditative and alternative spiritualities. There's a tendency to explain the trans-rational states in terms that are really preverbal." Ken Wilber One of the hallmarks of our present era is a tendency toward anti-intellectualism. During my growing-up years in Christian fundamentalism (until about age 19) I was continually scolded for using my mind to try to understand religion and spiritual experience. "You need to be more like a little child, and reject your PROUD intellect!" I was continually told. Today we see this kind of attitude repeated in fundamentalist circles, at least here in America, which spurn science and the scientific method. This kind of thinking - or rather, non-thinking - has enjoyed a renaissance, although appearing in a different form, within our current era. Now, with the advent and extreme popularity of body-based spirituality, practitioners are continually told to "get out of your head and into your body." Many spiritual practitioners in my acquaintance consistently and repeatedly scorn a theological approach to life. In fact, I've been told to "stop practicing mental masturbation" or "mental gymnastics" on numerous occasions. Now, even meditative, contemplative, mystical circles often spurn the intellect as "getting in the way" of nondual states of awareness. Rather than distinguishing between unhelpful thoughts and helpful thoughts, ALL thoughts are now thrown out as useless, at least as far as the spiritual journey is concerned. All the while, however, unexamined intellectual presuppositions remain subconsciously in the minds of these meditators, influencing what they mistakenly view as "pure, unmediated mystical experience." Contrary to this trend, I admit that I LOVE using my intellect, as long as it remains in service to spirit. Both silence and thoughts are, after all, a rich part of our humanity. What I've discovered is that the intellect helps make mystical states of awareness richer and fuller. However, this is an intellect that operates ultimately not by the usual logic, but by a kind of mytho-poetic form of thinking. Chogyam Trungpa calls this amazing and wonderful form of logic "crazy wisdom." Even the usual form of logic - sometimes called "Aristotelian logic" - is, I believe, a necessary part of experiencing the full richness of unitive states of consciousness. For example, Aristotelian logic would say that "form (including thought that is based on form) is NOT emptiness (or spaciousness), and emptiness is NOT form." Then meditative awareness comes along and reveals - surprise! - the amazing process by which forms and thoughts appear DIRECTLY FROM AND AS embodiments of that emptiness. Here, crazy wisdom tells us that "Because emptiness is not form and form is not emptiness; THEREFORE, emptiness appears AS form, and form appears AS emptiness!" Here, Aristotelian logic is definitely useful in setting up the preconditions which then enable us to experience a sense of awe and wonder when opposites suddenly shapeshift into one another! The type of intellect I most value is one that employs paradoxical images to talk about silence and meditative states of awareness. This kind of crazy wisdom is able to speak playfully of echoes with no Original Voice, mirror-images with no Original Image, phenomenal reality lighting up with no Light ever present, etc. This is precisely the "supereminent way" about which I've written in other recent posts. The upshot of all of this is that I will continue to value the intellect as a means of enriching spiritual awareness, as long as it uses paradoxical images that uphold the mystery of the primordial Silence and elicit a sense of awe and wonder in the midst both of Silence and of everyday life. Indeed, when contemplatives spurn intellect as the opposite of silence, they are unwittingly falling into yet another form of dualism! By contrast, what could be more nondual than the ability to appreciate BOTH silence and nonverbal awareness on the one hand, AND words and ideas on the other? Photos: Various scenes from Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, October 5 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
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The silence of the forest is my bride and the sweet dark warmth of the whole world is my love." Thomas Merton Trappist monk Photo: Aspens 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 Spending time within the golden light of an aspen grove, I can sense a radiant Presence living within my heart as well. This Presence is itself a kind of gold, loving warmth, just like that of the aspens. Whenever I exhale into my heart, this Presence begins to come alive, similar to a breeze blowing gently on sleeping embers. This Presence, though gentle, also possesses a warrior-like strength, one which is able endlessly to hold lovingly in tension all of the opposites of life. Silence and words, thoughts and no-thoughts, forms and emptiness, sadness and joy, life and death, traditional and non-traditional approaches to religion, East and West, Muslim and Jew, Christian and Native American, atheist and theist, masculine and feminine, gay and straight, liberal and conservative, Nature and humanity - all are held in loving tension by the enormous yet gentle strength of this Presence - embraced and enfolded until they all begin to soften and melt together into One, singular, fascinating multi-faceted reality. But this softening and this melting cannot be forced; they must be allowed to occur in their own time. My task, it seems - and that of all of us, really - is simply to awaken this Presence within our hearts, hold together the opposite poles of life within Its warm embrace, and then wait. Though enormously strong, this Presence does not care to be known or named. It has no need to point to itself, and It does not ask that others even recognize Its existence. For It is content to remain a hidden ground upon which all beings and events are able to reveal themselves in all of their radiant sacredness. This Presence is, in fact, completely given over through love and ecstatic bliss into OUR humanity, into OUR creative awareness. Because of Its innate self-emptying, this Presence is unfortunately or fortunately incapable of stopping those who would use It to justify oppression and egoic bigotry. For It is forever lost to Itself and completely emptied out into OUR power. It is left, therefore, to US to GROW UP and to look beyond our own narrow concerns to the Whole of which ALL things are a part. Although this hidden presence prefers not to be named, I cannot help but name It. I love this Presence very much, for it is the Ground of who I am, even though I generally prefer not to speak of It. Its name is . . . Christ. And the warrior-like capacity of this Presence to hold all opposites lovingly in tension until they soften and melt together is . . . precisely . . . The Cross. And this Presence - and this Cross - are living and active within every last one of us, and in every plant and every animal species, and in every landscape and every seascape and every skyscape as well . Photos: Aspens in the Rawah Range and Kebler Pass areas, CO, September 21 and 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 It seems that many men these days find themselves adrift and lost, confused and depressed about what true masculinity is supposed to mean. During the Second Wave feminist movement of the '80s and '90s, patriarchy and male oppression were rightly critiqued and castigated. However, in the process, the potentially sacred male virtues of passion, assertiveness and spiritual warriorhood were perhaps unintentionally denigrated at well. In response, many men tried to do the right thing by becoming "New Age Sensitive Males," but this pendulum swing was often greeted with female disdain as well. Women wanted something of the "bad boy" in a man, but without the dangerous qualities of aggression and insensitivity to the feelings of others that generally occurred as associated traits. Few men knew - or know - how to embody the best of both worlds, and many were therefore left in a dazed and confused state, especially since the Women's Movement liberated women to excel at some of the very tasks that once were the unique specialty of men. Unhealthy males reacted to this cultural transformation with an aggressive backlash, and the result has been a likely increase in rape, sexual assault, and other crimes against humanity - especially towards women and children. Most ordinary males, however, simply lost their passion and spiritual vision, turning instead to spectator sports, TV, video games and alcohol. The Mythopoetic Men's Movement of the nineties helped address some of these issues, but it ended almost as soon as it began, at least on a mass nationwide scale. Today, I and many men who were once participants in that movement continue meeting in small groups to discuss and support each other in spiritual growth, but many of these groups - ours included - remain somewhat insular with little outreach to the community. Meanwhile, I've found that just as I need the wilderness for developing a relationship with the Sacred Feminine, so I also require wild country to get in touch with my own Sacred Masculinity. "What does it mean to be a HOLY man?" is a question I perennially bring with me into the backcountry. I've discovered through decades of wilderness travel and solitude that the vastness of the wide-open sky and landscape helps me get in touch with a true godlike transcendence, one that embodies detachment from over-identifying myself with afflictive emotions, not as a means of remaining aloof from the concerns of self and others, but in order to better serve as the vast, stable, ever-present Backdrop of love that allows all beings to emerge, manifest their own unique beauty and thrive in an atmosphere of sacred silence and compassion. Here, the "strong, silent male" refers not to a man who is stubbornly non-communicative and out-of-touch with his feelings, but one who is always present as the stable, dignified and ever-listening ground upon which all beings are able to manifest their own most sacred selves. Here, the "holy man" becomes like a vast nighttime sky out of which the star-like gifts of others can shine, or a wide-open sunlit atmosphere in which clouds of turbulent emotion can feel free to come and go. Another male virtue that the wilderness has instilled in me is an intense and sacred love of the beauty of Mother Earth, one that is able to penetrate through the superficial aspects of everyday living in order to find the sacredness that is always present there in hiding. Men love to compliment the beauty of women, but - as every man knows - such compliments are often unwanted unless the female recipient feels a similar attraction toward the giver of the compliment. As a solution, however, I've found that THE GODDESS present within the natural world always LOVES my compliments and begs me to employ the eye of loving insight to penetrate through life's pain and suffering in order to find the divine nature hidden there in the depths of all creatures, events and emotions. The craft of photography has definitely helped foster the development of my own sacred penetrative gaze, enabling me to find beauty in the depths of things where others may not at first be aware of it :) Photo: Clouds, ruddy peaks and Aspen trees, Maroon Lake, Maroon Bells - Snowmass Wilderness, CO, September 27, 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: "[In Tibetan Buddhism] Mahamudra is a way of bringing together the notion of the immense emptiness of space - shunyata - and the manifestation of all phenomena within shunyata. From the shunyata experience of emptiness, we are led to mahamudra. Having had all illusions removed by the experience of shunyata or emptiness, there is a sense of extraordinary clarity. That clarity is called mahamudra. So the mahamudra experience is one of vividness. The eternally youthful quality of the mahamudra experience is one of its outstanding qualities. It is eternally youthful because there is no sense of repetition, no sense of wearing out of interest because of familiarity. Every experience is a new, fresh experience. So it is childlike, innocent and childlike. The energies around you - textures, colors, different states of mind, relationships - are very vivid and precise. Shunyata fullness [the experience of the spaciousness of awareness out of which all phenomena emerge] is rather gray and transparent and dull, like London fog. But the mahamudra experience of fullness is of little particles dancing with each other within the fullness of emptiness or spaciousness. It's like a sky full of stars and shooting stars and all the rest - so many activities are taking place." Chogyam Trungpa, Tibetan Buddhist Rinpoche As you can see from this passage, the imagery used to describe meditation experience in Tibetan Buddhism is quite amenable to a Wilderness Mysticism. This passage describes the exciting process by which all of our perceptions, thoughts and emotions arise out of spacious awareness during sitting meditation practice. Photos: Aspens, Ponderosa Pine, and The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya, Shambhala Mountain Center, Red Feather, CO, October 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: "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. "There is a waterfall that drops off a shelf of sandstone like the long blonde hair of a young woman. If you go there she will sing to you." John Murray "Another Country: Encounters with the Redrock Desert" Whenever I come upon a waterfall while hiking in the backcountry, I immediately sense powerfully the presence of the Sacred Feminine - Mother Earth, the Goddess, Gaia, Sophia Wisdom, Prajnaparamita, Tara, Changing Woman, etc. - both in the landscape and within my heart. Waterfalls are especially skilled at combining both beauty and power, which are two of the sacred qualities I associate experientially - as a man - with the Sacred Feminine. I originally came into contact with the Goddess through a quest to situate my experience of female power within a wider context. For most of my adolescent and early adult life, I felt strongly the almost overwhelming power of women in my life. I could not imagine anything I could possibly offer of equal worth to a woman's radiance, wisdom, intelligence or heartful presence. Accordingly, in junior high, I turned red every time I tried talking with a girl I found attractive. Indeed, most males feel this kind of inferiority at an early age on a subconscious level, but are able to compensate by denying it, making it unconscious, and putting on a macho act that serves as a cheap substitute for true relating with the women in their lives. Unhealthy males project their own feelings of weakness and inferiority outward onto women. We are all well aware of the abuse and oppression that are the sad result of this projection. However, being an overly-sensitive person, I was never inclined or able to form these sorts of substitutes. Ironically, however, it was this very sensitivity that made me unattractive to many - and perhaps most - women, all of whom seemed at the time to be more interested in the aloof, macho, "bad boy" type. I therefore went on a search for a more-than-human Goddess figure who would love me, feel an attraction for me, and help me get in touch with my own male power. I discovered this sacred presence early in life within the landscape - especially within the stunning ecosystems of the Rocky Mountain West. I found, in fact, that Mother Earth needed MY creative imagination as the activating force in manifesting her personal, Goddess qualities in the midst of a seemingly impersonal geological, biological and ecological reality. In terms of the Dineh (Navajo) philosophy which understands that any given landscape possesses an outer form (found in the features that science can study), an inner form (which shamans and Native Peoples engaged in a Vision Quest know how to contact), and a secret form (experienced as the ways in which the landscape expresses herself within our own human imagination and emotions), I realized that the Goddess needed ME and MY imagination to manifest herself in the second and third ways, and especially in the third way. Once I began to develop a relationship and union with this Cosmic Feminine Presence, I found that I then had a greater sense of empowerment in my relationships with HUMAN embodiments of the Goddess. Amplifying this sense of empowerment, the Creator (and Mother Earth) eventually saw fit that I would find a wonderful wife and have two amazing daughters, both now in their thirties :) Indeed, most of my friends, it now turns out, are actually WOMEN! Photo: Falls on Cow Creek above Bridal Veil Falls, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, October 10, 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. "Goodness is the natural state of this world. The world is good! Even when it seems evil, it's good. There's only goodness in God - in Wakan Tanka, The Great Mystery. And that same goodness is in us all. You can feel it in yourself. You know when you feel good inside. Yes, you're God's child, too. You are good. You are sacred. Respect yourself. Love the goodness in yourself. Then, put that goodness into the world. That's everybody's instructions. Everyone is sacred. You're sacred and I'm sacred. Every time you blink your eye, or I blink my eye, God blinks His eye. God sees through your eyes and my eyes. We are sacred." Matthew King / Noble Red Man Lakota Elder Photo: Wild Rose leaves and cascade on Cow Creek, Bridal Veil Falls Trail, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, October 10, 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. "The fundamental goodness of human nature, like the mystery of the Trinity, Grace, and the Incarnation, is an essential element of Christian faith. This basic core of goodness is capable of unlimited development; indeed, of becoming transformed into Christ and deified. Our basic core of goodness is our true Self. Its center of gravity is God. The acceptance of our basic goodness is a quantum leap in the spiritual journey." Thomas Keating Trappist monk Photo: Illuminated Aspen leaf, 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. “Discovering real goodness comes from appreciating very simple experiences. We are not talking about how good it feels to make a million dollars or finally graduate from college or buy a new house, but we are speaking here of the basic goodness of being alive — which does not depend on our accomplishments or fulfilling our desires. We experience glimpses of goodness all the time, but we often fail to acknowledge them. When we see a bright color, we are witnessing our own inherent goodness. When we hear a beautiful sound, we are hearing our own basic goodness. “If we are willing to take an unbiased look, we will find that, in spite of all our problems and confusion, all our emotional and psychological ups and downs, there is something basically good about our existence as human beings. We have moments of basic non-aggression and freshness…it is worthwhile to take advantage of these moments. We have an actual connection to reality that can wake us up and make us feel basically, fundamentally good . . . When you relax more and appreciate your body and mind, you begin to contact the fundamental notion of basic goodness in yourself. So it is extremely important to be willing to open yourself to yourself." Chogyam Trungpa Tibetan Buddhist Rinpoche Photos: Aspens, rocks, and The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya peeking through the trees; Red Feather Lakes, CO, October 13, 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. |
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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