The Mystic Church of Hiking in Acadia

The first time hiking in Acadia, I took the Beachcroft trail, beginning with a set of granite steps for more than half a mile

until I reached an overlook above the valley pond that’s called the Tarn which lies beneath the steep expansive side of Dorr Mountain.

From there I scrambled up the face of Champlain Mountain's pink slick granite and low evergreens until I reached its naked dome.

There I was ascending when the barrier of summit disappeared and right before my eyes was nothing but the great blue sea of luminous Atlantic.

It hit me like a mystic ton of spectacle and infinite reflection, as if my body had just opened up revealing deeper breadth I never knew was there.

Long sighs came sweeping from the vast horizon where I glimpsed a cloud or two above ancestral shores of Nova Scotia, if not France itself.

My heart was sky, my feet were earth, and no-mind was my state of being. No wonder I'd return to walkabout for corresponding seeing.

Disbelief: That's the Ticket

Between my absolute zero and my universal one,

my way meanders and encircles and is sitting

at the junction of the Yin and Yang trains.

When you've ridden one as far as it can go,

then ride the other. This is called arriving at

your destination by the road you didn't take.

The Emptiness of Offices and Goldfinches

I had an insignificant small office with a window at the rearmost section of the building where I could see an undeveloped spruce tree

growing from a secret patch of grass protected from the eighteen-wheeler trucks arriving at the shipping dock just twenty feet away. 

Outside my door, an open lab, where quality assurance underneath my diligent direction happened.

Christmas, San Diego John, a quality inspector I had hired, just recently returned from California, who missed the West Coast desperately

and had returned east only for his wife's desire to be back home with family, had gifted me a thistle-feeder, which I hung upon that tree. 

As winter turned to spring I watched the goldfinch flocks begin to turn in color, from a drab and almost gray-like green to brilliant yellow.

I had never seen this spectacle before. It's almost twenty years from that occasion. John had left his family soon thereafter,

moving back to San Diego, and I heard he had a heart attack and died. In time I got a transfer to Materials

and then I was promoted to a bigger office with much more responsibility and then, in time, let go.

But it's the transformation of those small goldfinches that provide this story all its lovely

lack of any allocated quality of all material effect or meaning. I have to thank my great unknowable for that.

Fundy in Consciousness

The Bay of Fundy has the greatest tidal ranges in the world extending over fifty feet. Some docks are almost built on stilts and still some boats will lie in mud flats at the lowest tide.

It was almost named a wonder of the world by those who deem themselves the legislature of such matters.  (A chickadee is hovering about my window at this moment and appears to be the current wonder of this world.)

Others on that list that didn't make the final cut of seven are Grand Canyon, Mount Vesuvius, the Matterhorn, and Angel Falls. You can look the winners up,

but there's just one real wonder of the world and this is consciousness itself. Without it, there's no wonder, all would be like deepest sleep, and not a word could write it otherwise. Enjoy.

Who Believes in Atheists?

Atheism is a sad religion. To believe there isn't any god but still believing in the universe it made is sorry stuff indeed.

It's like to want a cake without a cook, and not to see you cooked up both the cake and yes, the cook, and all of it is nothing but imagination

and what's more: there isn't even any you. The me and universe it made is just the means that I intended to—to know my unknown essence.

In the end, it's not so much a god that's unbelievable, but the person in itself, professing atheism when there isn't any atheist at all.

But then again, just who am I?

The Great White Spirit of Mount Pemigewasset

It was my first real hike alone, in the Whites. Admittedly it wasn't Washington, or even Lafayette, but ascending fifteen-hundred feet was not exactly easy for this novice.

The path itself was just a little shy of two miles long from trailhead to the summit, and I enjoyed the early easy-going, although the bear claw imprint on an ash tree supplied adrenaline enough.

As the incline increased, I felt my heartbeat do the same, and as it increased even more, my backpack and my breathing got a little heavy. By the time I reached the top, I was literally a mess; sweat had soaked my t-shirt through and through.

But there atop the granite features they call Indian Head, I could see the notch below in all its mirroring the humble genius of an ancient glacier's flow. I thought of subsequent Abenaki tribes who traveled through that very valley giving thanks and praying to the silent peaks above them.

And then I saw the spirit of our age emerge from out behind a thicket. He was carrying a can of beer and smoking a cigarette, so cool there wasn't any sign of sweat about him. "Hey man," he laughed, "don't go spiriting  away my valuable point of view."

The Primordial Prophecy of I Ching

Careful formulation of your first and foremost question and the asking of it clearly and directly is the answer.

Whose face is that I see? What color is the sky? Which one is best for me? In truth, just who am I? 

Any mindful, lucid, open question is in fact an inquiry pertaining only to oneself. Even asking "who am I" reveals I am the Absolute Unknown.

In other words, much like the great reflexive universe of evolutionary and enlightening Intent, I always know, I always am, the answer—

it's the question, or the universe, that I am formulating which is the most material event that will, in space and time, reveal it.

The Revelation of the Poet Basho Divine

In Japan, on Matsushima Bay, a peacock passed a dragon in the light of day, two ferry boats progressing in their opposite directions. We were on the peacock,

contemplating pine-enshrouded little islands that pervade the bay like earthly stars within a navy sky or cherry blossoms being blown into the wind and rain.

But none of these descriptions do that setting any justice. In his journey on the narrow road, the poet Basho wrote a haiku on each scene he saw except on this one. No inspiration could exceed its revelation.

Tao that can be named is not the Tao. But tradition has him writing just the name of Matsushima and an exclamation word or two. Three times. The one becomes the two becomes ten-thousand exclamations!

Holy Mother, this astounding universe is either unbelievable or overwhelming if approached with any small amount of true attention. Dragon or the peacock: either way, it's not your doing.

The Evolutionary Sādhanā of the Light

It is the Great Intent of That Unknown to know itself. This is labeled evolution by the scientific-minded or enlightenment by those of no-mind.

The point of all of this, my world, our universe, is knowing I am That, that I, the Great Unknown, must first forget myself within the known,

this vast molecular morass of my intentional star stuff, and slowly learn by doing, rise by suffering, create my own vast laboratory for an ultimate unknowing,

where I see that all of this is false except my nameless and ungraspable existence, and in knowing only this, That Great Unknown now knows itself,

and like the final scene in some finale of a situation comedy, turns off the lights—but until then, I follow my enlightening intent, my evolutionary energy, my bliss, my love, my That.

Carl Jung on Facebook

There are no natural laws but just statistical truths and every one is subject to exception. Carl Jung said that. The hero knows it's zero and plays one anyways. I said that. 

All of this is just a story that we tell while on the road to nowhere. Nothing must be something to discern itself. An irony is something physical suddenly realizing all is immaterial. I just said that on Facebook.

We're all just avatars the absolute unknown must use to see itself, but in the process it believes the avatar is me and I forget I'm not an avatar. The paradox goes on forever if we only think about it.

One will climb the height of consciousness to gain that lack of oxygen within the Everest of awareness and. Be. Still.