147-Why Must We Meditate?

 We must meditate to attain deep faith, After we received the first contact of God, we should then seek to develop the contact into a greater consciousness. That is what Jesus asked everyone to do. He wanted them to receive his omnipresent consciousness. And that is what Paramahansaji teaches. He brings us God and all he asks is that we receive.- Rajarsi Janakananda, "Rajarsi Janakananda: Great Western Yogi"

In God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita a spiritual text filled with wisdom about life and purpose  as well as powerful advice on living virtuously but authentically without succumbing to life's temptations or other people's dreams you will understand the reason to meditate to know God. The first time that you know (Talk With) God you may be overwhelmed. My fist time was skiing Arapahoe Basin in Colorado (13,050ft.) I had just fallen several hundred feet down a headwall after jumping off the hanging cornice that is along the traverse to the Pallavicini (before the Pali Lift, 1978) another skier cut in front of me and I caught the tails of his skis with the tips of mine. I began performing tip rolls down the steep face and every time I came back up on my skis I thought, I would break my neck burying my head in the deep powder on the next roll. After what seemed like an eternity of rolls I was able to throw myself on to my side to stop the rolls. I stood shakily resting on my poles with my knees knocking together and took stock of my well being. To my surprise I was unhurt. In my mind, I had crossed the line, the line in the mountains that if you step over it, you will die. Standing there shaking I asked God, "What do you want of me?" I was twenty-five with no direction.The answer came as clearly as if I had been in a conversation with you, "Be A Teacher!" In my bewilderment I don't think I grasped what fully happened. It was beyond my comprehension what the reality of what it was. I climbed and skied all over the U.S. and Canada many times in my life after, but it always remained in my mind what God had spoken to me. Enrolling in writing classes I was to meet my Mentor and work many years with her in my skills. (The Subject of Waltzing With Rhada.) It wasn't until a Writing Conference in Telluride that I would meet my Guru (Gurdev Paramahansa Yogananda) in the form of The Autobiography of a Yogi and begin my Journey into Self-Realization. Through Meditation and Spiritual Awareness would I understand what God wanted of me all those years ago. I write ( now at 70) because I was told to "Teach" and while I didn't understand it then, I do now and in the coming weeks, months and years up to the 2026 Winter Olympics I will not be silent as to the happenings of the world. Especially Education and Starvation of Peoples and Children (Both Figuratively and Literally), there will be no more Silence!

Mere-Gurudev, Krishna Das

Lord Krishna, Om Namah Shivaya, Krishna Das

How it should be

Some men grow
and they go away to war.
My friends and I
we went to ski.
It is how it should be.

Todays Song
"Release," Pearl Jam

The Last Train To The Coast

Now you know that I have set a side my worn out Strohlz jet foamed ski boots. They were a Christmas gift from my High School sweet heart. It has been forty years since I decided to take a year off from the pursuit of an Engineering Degree to spend a winter skiing in America. During those years I have watched the sunset and the snows come to almost every major mountain range in North America and worked at every possible job that would advance that goal. I have lived in converted railroad box cars that were made into sleeping bunks on the desolate plains of Wyoming, to multi-million dollar log homes on Missouri Flats in Aspen Colorado for the sake of the next steeper run filled with that precious white gold, powder snow.

This year as the snows and Winter Olympics come to Sochi, Russia, a place where I would have never ever dreamed of skiing nor imagined ever being able to visit, I am beginning what I hope will be the culmination of my life long dream of pursuing mountain tops. The dream is to write about them. I have recently completed a course on self-publishing e-books. After many false starts of writing and compiling a collection of short stories that are worthy of publishing, the day has arrived. The stories have been edited and assembled in a collection titled “The Lure Of The Mountain King And Other Stories.” It is my goal and dream to move forward and be able to finally tackle the greatest challenge of my life. I hope to move from being a writer as a hobby to being a writer making a living at it. Just like the obsession of pursuing the Mountain King, I am possessed by the desire to write about my time on the Mountain King, Arapahoe Basin. There have been many false starts and outright failures on my part to move toward this accomplishment. I can only equate those to the times that I spent skiing first green circle trails (easiest), then blue box trails (more difficult), then black diamond trails (most difficult), to finally climbing out of bounds all day to ski trails where there aren’t even any names or boundaries.

In their infinite wisdom grandmothers all seem to understate the obvious not only did my grandmother tell me "(Albert), word’s ... they are the key." She always said you have to crawl before you can walk. How very fitting for someone who grew up being a part of the instant gratification society, having recently lived through a “Great Recession” that turned the equity in my home, (that I was planning on using the proceeds for moving to the ocean in Oregon and walking on the beach while writing my short stories and novels), to being a commander of a submarine, (my beautiful Stonewood Grande), in Parachute, Colorado.

The greatest lesson that I have ever learned has been at the knees of my grandparents who lived through the real great depression. The lesson is to dream and if you are going to dream, why not make them big dreams. When song writers dream and write about salvation, they always seem to write about their salvation as a train. You know the great gospel songs about trains. One in particular titled “People get Ready.”  The lyrics are “People get ready there's a train a - coming, you don’t need no ticket, you just get on board. All you need is faith to hear the diesel’s humming. Don’t need no ticket, you just thank the lord.” Hell, even Dylan titled an album “Slow Train Coming.”  I guess that is why I titled this piece, The Last Train To The Coast. It is my last big dream to be at the ocean and writing about my life in and on the mountains.

I have started what I hope will be the very last vehicle and business to get me there. Capitol Plumbing and Heating, named after the second highest peak in Colorado. Here is to big mountains, big dreams, and walking hand in hand with my beautiful wife on a big beach next to the big ocean.