Guru on the Mountain: Chiggers, Lizards and Desert Heat: My Vision Quest to Discover the Source of Spirit

by Darrell G Yardley

From Back Cover:

New Age / Spirituality; Science and Religion

The Guru on the Mountain

If you’ve never been on a true Vision Quest—or even if you have—you’ll want to join Darrell Yardley on a spiritual journey in the Chihuahuan Desert in Texas. In this book, he shares his experiences, starting with Native American medicine man Strong Eagle’s sweat lodge and then alone for four days amidst the cactus, encountering crazy itchy chiggers, chatting with his inquisitive visitor “Lajitas Lizard,” and suffering through hours of blasting heat.

Each day brings Darrell new insights. Guided by the 4-direction medicine wheel, Darrell meets his personal Jungian archetypes: Turquoise Woman, Cougar, Wind Eagle, Bandido, and the dragon Chaos. Each offers a profound message about human consciousness and our existential quest for meaning.

Be at Darrell’s side as he imagines a guru, by the name of Charles, sitting on his high spiritual mountaintop. The guru sparks us to ask: how can we too arrive at this higher level of spirituality? To this question, Darrell brings his background as an evolutionary biologist and explores the underlying science of the human drive for spirituality and an end to suffering. He poses questions, and draws some provocative conclusions, about what is real and what is not.

The Guru on the Mountain is a stimulating panorama of science and philosophy, full of wit, pathos, and inspiring visions. Funny and transformative, this is a journey you do not want to miss.

Darrell Yardley, PhD, LPC, is a long-time seeker of inner peace and spiritual wisdom. Visit him at www.darrellyardley.com

Photo by Noelle Yardley

Darrell G. Yardley

Amazon.com

Chop water, carry wood is a blog by Darrell G. Yardley, PhD, LPC, focusing on wide variety of topics on spirituality and science, Zen Buddhism, secular religious naturalism, Native American spirituality, and science (psychology, evolution, genetics, neurobiology, chaos theory). Defining spirituality as a combination of the cultivation of inner-peace and personal growth.

Promoting simplicity, mindfulness, self-sufficiency, self-reliance, self-actualization, inner-peace, personal growth, and eco-responsibility. My credo is: reduce, repair, repurpose, recycle, and compost. I will take up a range of topics including gardening, bicycling, and whatever topics are on my mind.

Having just finished my second book, The Guru on the Mountain, which shortly will be available on Amazon.com, I am working toward another with a working title, Buddha on a Bike, about my increased interest and involvement in bicycling, the adventures thereon, and relevant to the above topics.

The blog’s title is a wordplay based on an old Zen proverb: “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”

What does it mean? There are several layers of meaning to this old, pithy saying. One one level it means that the world does not change when we become “enlightened”. We still must do the work we need to do from moment to moment. The world doesn’t change, but we do, or rather, our perspective and response to the world changes. After enlightenment, the world is still just, the world. It just is. At another level, it is telling us to be fully present in each moment, i.e. to be mindful, no matter what our task.

It is about living your regular life, but from a different perspective and understanding. A spiritual life does not require that we shave our heads, live in the desert, give up all possessions, etc. We can live our regular life, only different; with mindfulness, less attachment, letting go into each moment, then letting it go into the next, realizing that all is impermanent. Being more relaxed, less uptight, realizing that nothing is permanent, everything changes. Less judgmental.

My wordplay is that you can’t of course, chop water, not unless of course it is its solid form of ice. So, my wordplay is a paradox built upon the Zen paradox, known as koans. Koans are Zen word puzzles that are directed to helping students (that be all of us) to obtain enlightenment.

Hopefully my words will help you in this endeavor in your own journey. If not, at least maybe a little enjoyment. Gassho