Mountain Musings
View of Cowles Mt from San Carlos
I often hike up San Diego’s Cowles Mountain with the intent to manifest a higher vibration that I can carry into the rest of my day. Traversing the same path sometimes 4 times a week allows me to look beyond the now familiar landmarks, boulders and switchbacks. Similar to how one looks beyond the words, notes and patterns of music once it’s been blazed repeatedly into the neural network allowing for fuller emotional performance, embellishment and nuance, my mountain is now the support which encourages amazing thinking, spiritual connection and personal growth.
Recently on the trail when it’s been hot out and I’ve felt sluggish or just beat, I’ve taken notice of the rise and fall in my energy and tried to notice what kinds of internal and external stimuli could be related to the change. If I argued with my children earlier or am stressing over the heat or I’m dwelling on a future painful telephone call, It seems to take forever to make it to the top and then I’ll pat myself on the back and call it good exercise when I make it. For in those cases, it is only the exercise that benefits me. Stimuli such as thoughts about my lovely husband when he’s being amazingly supportive, the wonderful regular massage clients I will be seeing later that day or even the smiles of passing hikers tend to make my steps lighter and more effective. Listening to music or a good podcast also makes the journey rich and effortless and the benefits go far beyond the physical level. Am I doing anything different physically? Nope, it’s still the same beautiful sunny sky and 1-3/4 mile trek up 1592 feet to the highest point in San Diego. Because thoughts are energy, they do affect us. If anything has ever convinced me of that it is the mountain.
The mountain has become such a part of my life, such a part of me, that my thoughts have shifted from once needing to “conquer” the mountain where I pushed myself to get to the top in a certain amount of time, to thoughts of combining my energy with that of the mountain and allowing the mountain itself to pull me to the top where I belong. The 1/16 Lakota Sioux in me is compelled to accept the energetic role of “daughter mountain” and I delight in silently adding the titles “sister” and “brother mountain” to my cheerful greetings of passing travelers.
My intuition lets me in on the secret of which travelers are there for physical exercise, which are running away and which are there to make a connection. Many push forward, already concerned with the days work ahead or dwelling on current but far away issues. Their mountain connection is buried deep inside. They very rarely make eye contact or say hello except out of habit. Some come to escape life and drown it out with hard exercise or loud music. The mountain helps to serve their purpose. They don’t see me. Then there are those who are in the moment of the experience and feel very present as they maintain eye contact in their greeting just long enough for a wonderful exchange of genuine connection to be made.
Achieving the rewarding summit doesn’t just allow for panoramic view of my external world but my personal internal world as well. The meditation of the mountain clears my mind and allows me to see my life with laser clarity, opens new avenues of thought and allows me the time and space to explore those blossoming ideas and concepts. The physical/emotional experience of visiting the mountain again and again with the joy and the peace of mind that I have come to manifest there consistently is echoed in the blazing of my neural pathways, accessable anytime I want to draw upon it, with what it feels like to really live in my authentic joyful self.
