I began a new class this week.  When I start with a new group of people, I understand there are new spirits checking what I have to give them from the wealth which learning our world has given me.  At the same time, I am also studying our world as expressed by their new eyes, smiles and voices.

I am already comfortable with the new class, although it's always a transition.  I enjoyed the old class very much.  I had become very comfortable with them.  Even though new students appeared each new week, and others slowly returned to their countries, we felt like a tight-knit group.  I had my setting, and my people.  Then the term ended, and we are meeting each other for the first time once again.

The first day I was somewhat uncertain about the new group.  I'd been assigned the same relatively lower level (3/10), but with a new book.  So I teach the same information, but in a new way, which is alright, I suppose.  The people are always new, and although the language is the same, we are spending our time enhancing our ability to communicate freely.  The language is just a vehicle to share our mind.

The first time you talk to a group of people, or one other person, or a trio or quartet, there is always that awkward uncertainty of how you're going to flow together comfortably in the moment.  The goal is for each of us to have the feeling of using one's life in a way that is worth all of the events of time working together to make us see the glorious be within this moment we play every instant of every day.  I think that's part of the key: recognizing that the world doesn't waste it's time growing for free, and instead really wants us to see how amazingly beautiful the world can be, moment to moment with instants of infinity.

Then again, maybe it's harder than I'm making it sound.  I think conversing well with the world takes plenty of practice, patience and persistence.  You have to continuously extend your mental, cultural, and sometimes, yes, even spiritual boundaries as you expand your comfort zone, that place where you are happy to be here.

There are many ways to feel more at home in the world.  You can meet new people with differences, try new experiences, consume new media, learn new skills, eat new food, and so on.  1 very important technique involves increasing your information and therefore your understanding of our world.

When you begin, it is easy to be interested and enthusiastic about learning, even if you don't realize that that is what you are doing.  This is because everyone enjoys something, and everything involves learning.  Once you learn for a while, though, it becomes evident that there is much you don't know or understand, and that much of that has enormous impacts on your world.  You can only learn so much, and since knowledge is the fuel for the imagination director's course through the halls and gardens of the Universe City, every choice you make has a hint of inherent uncertainty, even when faced with all the love you used uniting your brain for some sort of universally imaginative gain.  As we've always been told, the more we know, the better, wiser and clearer our present future unfolds.  Yet sometimes I can't easily see how this can be, especially because I can't learn everything, as knowledge and its inherent imagination encompass infinity, even if that's the same thing as you me.  Even with the passage of knowledge and wisdom from human to human, there is always a question.  Why?  Because answering is fun, albeit endless.

Even so, the more you understand of this show, the deeper, more luminous and vibrant will be the joy of your flow.

Ultimately, to feel this grow is the goal, which is measured with the glow of your soul.

You're here!

Play ball!

Love this!

On Columbus Day I drove west from the northeast corner, in a way, on heading toward home, although I had several places to be on the way.

 

The White Mountains of New Hampshire are the largest mountains in the Northeast.  The highest peak in our corner of the country is the Presidential Range's king, Mount Washington.  When I first moved to the capital region of New York, near the borders of southern Vermont and northeastern Massachusetts, I would sometimes see cars with bumper stickers reading "This Car Climbed Mount Washington."  Having come from the flat fields of malls and parking lots in suburban Long Island, I thought going to the top of a mountain in any fashion would be an unbelievable experience.  I'd ridden through the Adirondack Mountains many times before then, but those grand pedestals high in the sky seemed unattainable for a small helpless human like me.

Years later I got the idea to join some kind of hiking club in New Zealand (although they called it "tramping.")  I think all of the international students went on the first adventure, and then 90% of us stopped after that and found other adventures to go on here and there, but not with serious camping and climbing.

A few years after that a great friend of mine got a few of us into walking up mountains back to back summers, and that gave me the courage to climb some much bigger ranges in Asia.  And, naturally, that made me want to explore more of America's mountains when I returned home.

That summer I hiked a Vermont mountain with a friend soon after returning to the states, and then decided to make a pilgrimage to Mount Washington, but on foot as opposed to inside a car.  I highly recommend you go someday.

When I returned four years later a couple weeks ago, I was very excited to see the same mountains with autumn leaves.  I'd originally hoped to ascend Mount Jefferson, or any mountain, but I had taken my time in the city that morning, and the drive there was three hours.  A couple summers ago I might have tried to hike a mountain the same day, but it was overcast and probably wouldn't have afforded any good views.  And Jefferson was right next to Washington, so the view was pretty similar.  I eventually asked for camping advice at the visitor's center and found a place just before dusk where I could walk in a short distance, pitch my tent, and rest with the sounds of nature and the spirits of evergreen trees.

At first it appeared that it would stay cloudy all evening and that I should just turn in early, especially since I planned to get up very early in the morning.  I wasn't sure I was supposed to be camping where I was, and I thought it would be best to pack up and move on before anyone might take notice of me.  You're supposed to be 100 feet from the trail, but it was almost dark when I got there, and there weren't many places in the dark forest, so I just found a small field near the entrance and walked over a couple very small hills before finding a small space beneath a tree where nobody would see me.  As the state motto declares: Live Free or Die.

I thank my lucky stars that the very same show their serene splendor by moving the clouds and shining on a sanctuary for a soul seeking solemn solitude.  I stood in the field on the little hill and watched the stars for a long time before deciding to get my sleeping bag and lay down while staring up with music making me happy beyond words.