“It sure is beautiful, isn’t it?”

“No arguing that.” I say.

“The Lord certainly has a way with things that can make them take your breath away.”

“Indeed He does.”

For those who have never experienced the magnificence of the Grand Tetons exploding skyward from the green Wyoming tundra, you should know that it’s a vision that will leave you transfixed. There is something about the immense columns of granite, the verdant valley, and the vast blue sky that startles the mind into a spacious receptivity. Add to this the perfect reflection of the grandeur in the mirror-like waters of Jackson Lake, and you have a splendor that stands unrivaled. While I have to admit my ignorance about precisely what a Teton is, I’m pretty sure a grander collection I’ll never see—and for me, to experience it all from the saddle of my Harley, makes it that much more moving.

“They call me Pappy,” The voice snaps me out of my nature-induced trance. “And this here is my wife, Sharon.” he says, extending his hand to me.

“E, pleased to meet you.” I smile and shake their hands. “Heading back from Bike Week up in Sturgis?”

“How’d you guess?” Pappy says with a smile.

“Something about the leather chaps, sunburned faces, and the bug-encrusted Harley’s I passed as I rode up. Oh yeah, and then there’s that small matter of the Christian Motorcycle Association patches on your backs.”

“Yeah, I suppose it’s a bit hard to miss.” Pappy laughs, “We just rode in from Montana today.”

“Me too.” I say, “This is quite a place.”

“You can say that again.” We all turn back toward nature’s grand display before us. “We’re standing on sacred ground, that’s for sure.”

I smile to myself, chuckling at Pappy’s unintentional entrée.

“What makes you say that?” I ask, of course knowing full well what makes him say that.

“You can feel it,” he says with a hint of solemnity in his voice. “The majesty is overwhelming.”

I smile and nod. “It’s profound alright, but to be honest, the feeling it inspires is really more about you than it is about this place. Your experience of majesty is much more about your own transparency than it is about those hunks of granite over there.”

“Pappy’s not a transparent person; he’s quite a deep thinker.” Sharon chimes in, a little defensively.

“I didn’t mean…”

Pappy interrupts with a smile and puts his hand reassuringly on Sharon’s arm. “No honey, he’s not saying I’m shallow, he’s saying something different, right?”

“Something very different.” I agree. “You see the question is: how do we know when something is sacred?”

“Well, we can feel it.” Sharon replies.

“And what is that feeling?”

I can see Pappy resting back into the stored experiences in his mind. He smiles, “Awe.”

“And what is it that makes something capable of inspiring that sense of awe.”

“Its sacredness.” He says.

“Yes, that’s what we tell ourselves, but I’m going to suggest there’s something else going on here.”

“Okay.”

“We’ve seen that some things seem to inspire awe in us; and others don’t, right?”

They both nod.

“But we haven’t really considered that some things inspire awe in one person and have virtually no effect on another.”

“And…”

“And if something inspires awe in me, but not in you, then the experience of awe or its sacredness can’t be coming from the thing.”

“Because…” Pappy adds

“If it was inherent in the thing it would have a similar affect on everyone.” Sharon finishes.

They both smile at each other like they just successfully answered a Double Jeopardy question.

Just then, I see a Park Service ranger emerging from a path to our left. “Watch this.” I say to my new friends.

“Excuse me.” I call to the ranger.

He looks over, smiles and begins to make his way to us. “What can I do for you folks?”

“I was just wondering: what’s it like to work in the shadow of such immense beauty?”

“You mean those?” He nods toward the Tetons, puts his hands on his hips, and turns to give them a once over. “Yeah, they’re pretty great aren’t they?” he says, acknowledging them with all the enthusiasm of a grocer who has just been complimented on his display of tomatoes. He turns back to us and smiles. “Well, you folks enjoy your stay.”

“Thanks.” We all say in unison as the ranger ambles off again into the trees.

“He doesn’t seem to be in such awe,” Sharon says, “in fact, it seems like he might even be missing the sacredness all together.”

“That’s because he’s seen them a million times.” says Pappy.

“But I have to ask: what is it about experiencing sacredness a million times that makes it seem less sacred?” I add.

They both gaze off toward the Tetons as if the answer might be revealed in the experience.

“Would you like a hint?”

Pappy smiles, “Lay it on us.”

“Ever here of J. Krishnamurti?”

“Yeah, wasn’t he associated with the Theosophists?” Sharon asks.

“That’s the one.” I say, “He once said: ‘The day you teach a child the name of a bird, the child will never see that bird again.’”

We all gaze off toward the peaks.

“This is the thing: language doesn’t even begin to convey reality, but we all have an unexamined assumption that it does.” I continue, “Look at our ranger friend. He turned to face the mountains, but he was interacting with his thoughts about them—he wasn’t available to the experience.”

“And he missed the awe.” Pappy says.

“He missed the awe.” I confirm.

“So the day you teach a child the name of a bird, he begins to interact with the label or idea more than the experience of the bird?” Sharon asks.

“Precisely.”

“And scattering our attention between the various names, opinions, and ideas—in addition to the experience itself—obstructs the awe.” Pappy adds.

“You’ve got it; you could say that it requires a single-mindedness of sorts.” I say.

A big grin comes over Sharon’s face, “‘When thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.’ Christ says.” She thumbs over her shoulder toward the patch on her back. “We’re riding for him, you know.”

“I see that.”

We all laugh.

“But I’ll add that you have to be clear on what ‘thine eye be single’ means.” I say. “It’s not about focusing on one thing it’s about unfocusing to receive the oneness of things. It seems like a small distinction, but it’s the most important in the world.”

“That’s a great way to describe what was happening spontaneously to me when I first looked upon the view here.” Says Sharon.

“It just requires a soft open attention that equally receives all aspects of our experience simultaneously.” I say. “Contrast this with the fractured attention that we usually possess: where part of us is in the experience, part is attending to the label, and yet another part is dwelling on our associations with the label, and on and on.”

“Making us a distracted mess.” Pappy adds.

“It’s like when the bird-concept—and all of its associations—competes with the bird-experience.” says Sharon.

“Exactly.”

“Want to try an experiment?”

Sharon elbows Pappy. “Gee honey, I wish all of our rest stops were this interesting.”

“I’m game,” Pappy says, “my butt’s not quite ready to get back on that bike anyway.”

I step aside and gesture to a space out of the way on the side of the path. “Stand here and turn to look at the mountains.”

Pappy and Sharon stand side-by-side gazing off into the distance.

“Stand relaxed and take a couple of deep breaths and let all tension and effort melt out of your body.” I begin. “Now look at the details of the scene: notice the lake, trace the line of the mountain tops, look at the patches of snow near the summit; take in all the details.”

I give them a few moments to soak in the experience.

“Now, stop looking at the details. In fact, soften the focus of your eyes until you are taking in the whole of the vista without preference or prejudice toward any one aspect of the experience. Stay relaxed.”

Again I give them some time.

“And now turn slowly to your right, taking in the scenery, and whatever else comes into your view.”

Like a pair of bikers on a lazy susan, Pappy and Sharon begin to turn.

After a few more moments I ask them: “So what did you see?”

“The first part, where you asked us to look at all the details, I noticed a lot of things I hadn’t noticed before like the tree line and the amount of snow still near the crests.” Sharon says. “It was really beautiful.”

“But when we moved to the second part,” Pappy interjects, “when you had us soften our focus, that’s when the real beauty of it hit me.”

“Yeah, for me too—that’s when the awe came in.”

“So the experience of sacredness arose in the second variation?”

“And how.” Says Sharon.

“And what about language?”

“What do you mean?”

“What kind of language was present in the first version versus the second?”

They both pause to think.

“In the first version, I had a lot of words in my head, naming this, commenting on that.” Sharon says.

“Yeah, that was pretty much my experience too.” Says Pappy. “Almost like I was narrating the event.”

“And in the second…” I ask.

Again a pause.

“At first, there was some chatter.” Pappy says. “But then…”

“Nothing really.” Says Sharon.

“Yeah.”

“So we could say that the perception of sacredness showed its face as our attention to language fell away?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Remember my comment on transparency?” I ask.

“Something about my experience of the awe being more dependent upon my transparency than the mountains?”

“This is what I was talking about.” I say. “When you’re filled with language with all of its attendant agendas and preferences, you don’t have the capacity to really experience your experience. A significant portion of your attention is spent categorizing and analyzing concepts: I like this, I don’t like that, this should be here, this doesn’t belong, all of which interferes with our sense of wholeness, ease, or what we’ve been calling awe.”

“And that makes your experience feel less than satisfying.” Sharon concludes.

“That’s it.” I say. “To borrow again from the words of Christ: ‘Unless ye be like little children again, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”

“And little children seem so easily moved to awe and wonder.” Sharon offers.

“They don’t have so much mental clutter to obstruct the way.” I say. “That’s why Rumi said, “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”

“Knowing this, it seems funny that as a society we value cleverness so much more highly, isn’t it?” Pappy shakes his head.

“I can’t believe we’ve never really noticed this.” Sharon adds, “In a way, my runaway mind has been robbing me of the deepest experience of my life.”

“But what about the third part of the experiment?” I ask.

“How did that go?”

“Not so well as far as I’m concerned.” Says Pappy, “As soon as I got a glimpse of the restrooms, it was all over.”

“Why do you think that was?”

“Because hell, there ain’t no majesty in restrooms.”

“Or so you tell yourself.” I say, “And the moment you do, you’re again back into language, concept, and obstruction.”

“I’m obstructing my perception of the sacredness of the toilet?” he asks.

“I don’t know, are you?” I say, “Why don’t you check it out?”

Pappy turns to face the restroom.

“No, don’t start there,” I say, “start with the mountains. Once you find the experience of the awe there, then slowly turn toward the bathrooms.”

Pappy turns to Sharon. “Don’t you dare tell anyone that some stranger hooked me into trying to find the sacredness of a toilet.”

“Just follow the instructions, tough guy.” Sharon punches him in the arm.

“Alright Pappy, looking at the mountains, soften your gaze and let it all in. Relax your body, relax your mind, until you’ve got that sensation of the awe.”

I give him a few moments to bask in the feeling.

“Now without thinking about it, very slowly, in fact, very, very slowly, turn to the right and just allow the images to move through your field of vision without focusing on anything and stop when you’re facing the restrooms.”

Pappy begins his ultra slow turn and stops faced-off squarely with the restrooms. He stands motionless.

“Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit!” An ear-to-ear grin comes across his face. “You’re right E, it’s not the mountains it’s me.”

“Which of course means the same experience of the awe, of sacredness is available in everything—if you can relax beneath the language and concepts.” I conclude.

“Even a dern’d toilet.”

“Even a dern’d toilet.” I say

Sharon smiles and nudges Pap, “Gives a whole new meaning to praying to the porcelain god, doesn’t it old boy.”

“That it does, dear, that it does.”

Love & Blessings,

E

Yogi E, a.k.a. Eric Walrabenstein is the founder and director of Yoga Pura in Phoenix, AZ. He is the architect of Yoga Pura’s year-long Advanced Studies Program and trains yoga teachers nationally. E regularly travels the country holding workshops on the process of enlightenment and translating ancient yogic truths for daily living. He is currently at work on a book on unreasonable happiness.

Copyright 2006, Eric Walrabenstein, all rights reserved.