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The following short section (pages 73-75) is from the 2015 book, “Toward A Natural Forest: The Forest Service in Transition.” It is a memoir by Jim Furnish who was the Forest Supervisor of the Siuslaw National Forest in Corvallis, Oregon, as well as the agency’s Deputy Chief in Washington, D.C. This brief glimpse shows a pivotal, transitional, wrenchingly illuminative experience in his 34-year career, a turning point that shifted his frame of reference, his self-honesty, and set his feet on a truer path toward the inclusion of the forest ecosystem as a whole, living, sustainable complex. He began to see with “new eyes.” “A Glimpse of the Future” “John Kirkpatrick had roots in the Southwest Region (Arizona and New Mexico), as did his old friend John Bedell, the supervisor of the Carson National Forest. About 1986, these two instituted an annual tri-forest meeting of leadership teams, to include the Rio Grande National Forest and its supervisor, Tom Quinn. These meetings included field trips and discussions on issues of the day—everything from heap-leach gold mining to bear hunting to grazing issues. The teams made good professional connections and enjoyed stimulating talk. The Carson bunch hosted our second event, and we headed indoors for a presentation in Farmington, New Mexico after a couple of days outdoors. The presenter was Chris Maser, a former researcher with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from Oregon, who, near as I could tell, now devoted himself to writings and lecturing about his forest research. Maser gave a lengthy and very detailed lecture and slide show about how forests of the Pacific Northwest function. I sat enraptured as Maser talked about old-growth forests, squirrels and their poop, fungal spores, mycorrhizae (fungi that grow alongside tree roots to dramatically improve a tree’s uptake of water and soil nutrients), lichens, soil-dwelling insects, forest productivity, and by inference, how just about every aspect of our forest management approach was naïve and simplistic—in a word, wrong. Forests were incredibly complex biotic systems, Maser said. Simple notions of ‘just managing trees’ actually involved significant risk of upsetting the delicate balance of important forest relationships. I found myself aware that Maser was challenging my own simple notions. This made me both irked and curious. To begin with, I was ignorant of virtually everything he was talking about (also true, I suspect, for other Forest Service leaders in the room). Maser made a compelling case. If it was true, his conclusions damned the Forest Service. Supporting management with credible science should be the stock in trade of any competent natural resource agency. Yet how can you apply what you do not know or understand? And so, here I sat in a Forest Service meeting, my head exploding and my heart aching with shame. Many wanted to disagree with Maser, but the credibility of his scientific evidence disarmed them. I realized that I had relied on what the agency spoon-fed me in various training sessions, and sadly, that I’d spent little time exercising my responsibility in the professional discipline of independently pursuing knowledge. John Bedell, who was moderating the conference, enjoyed the role of provocateur and relished Maser working our brains with an eggbeater. A wild-eyed discussion ensued about the implication of Maser’s message. I went back in my memory, reviewing the bumps and struggles I’d experienced during the past few years just trying to do my job. I thought about things I’d seen that didn’t add up. The worn-out grazing lands on the Bighorn. The ferocious pressure to ‘get the cut out’ even when the forest couldn’t sustain it. The gadfly environmentalists that seemed to delight in strewing our path with lawsuits. Now, I recalled, there was a controversary brewing in the Pacific Northwest over a shy, innocent spotted owl. I realized these issues weren’t random and unconnected, but part of a larger reality that we were beginning to perceive. They were like icebergs—not especially menacing until one fully considered the larger threat below the surface. Internally, the Forest Service heard recurrent, insistent voices from many of our best and most credible resource specialists that the agency was ignoring important science that pointed to environmental problems. I’d seen for myself examples where our management wasn’t matching our science. Could that be the reason for the public’s growing disenchantment with how we were managing their treasured national forests? Were we that far out of sync with what people, especially some of our own agency experts, believed and valued? I found myself drifting toward increasing doubt about the merits of our logging policy and practice on national forests. What did the Forest Service owe the timber industry? The general public? The agency seemed to bow and scrape to a largely ungrateful commercial interest, even as the timber industry’s power and influence diminished sharply. Furthermore, strong similarities existed in the agency’s relationship with a ranching industry whose livestock grazed vast areas of public lands in the West. What was of ultimate value to the public whose land the Forest Service was privileged to manage? I didn’t think the general public viewed commerce on national forests as our top priority. But if they wanted changes, what were we to become? I wasn’t certain how to answer that, but I sure thought it had something to do with the Forest Service managing lands with a stronger, more humble environmental ethic.”   Chris Maser is the author of “The Redesigned Forest,” “Forest Primeval,” “Sustainable Forestry,” “Our Forest Legacy,” “Social-Environmental Planning: The Design Interface Between Everyforest and Everycity,” “Mammals of the Pacific Northwest,” and a co-author of “Trees, Truffles, and Beasts.”   Short Writings from Chris Maser and other posts that include him: • Forests as Our Spiritual Inheritance   (excerpt from Chris’ classic, “The       Redesigned Forest”) • Earth Day 2012   (includes a few quotes from Chris’ books) • The Essence Of Spiritual Ecology   (about environmental mystics, written       by Chris) • The Marys River of My Youth—Eternally Flowing   (a natural history book       about Chris’ growing up in Corvallis) • One Small Nudge affects the Whole World   (a brief look at the life       journey of Chris) • Eternity And The Banishment Of Fear   (an excerpt from Chris’       “Conversations with Fear”) • Spiritual Essence of Stabilitas   (an excerpt from Chris’ book, “The World       Is In My Garden”) • In Emptiness Is Spiritual Fulfillment   (an excerpt from “The World Is       In My Garden”) • Self-Emptying Meditation   (an excerpt from “The World Is In My       Garden”) • The Planet Of Dyslexia   (in part about Chris’ dyslexia and generally about       the learning disorder of dyslexia, as well as the number of famous       people who have greatly struggled with dyslexia) © Site post and photo of Chris Maser © by Zane Maser, 2021. Quoted paragraphs © Jim Furnish, “Toward A Natural Forest: The Forest Service in Transition,” pages 73-75, Oregon State University Press, 2015. Photos gratefully used from Wikimedia Commons. All 2009-2021 rights of Zane Maser and SunnyCat Astrology reserved worldwide. My editorial master and technological wizard is Chris Maser, my kind-hearted, generous husband.

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Let us be grateful to people who make us happy. They are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. Marcel Proust   The beauty in the world bespeaks the creative motherly instinct of God, and when we look upon all the good in Nature, we experience a feeling of tenderness within us. Paramahansa Yogananda   Other Garden and Nature Offerings: • Gone Gardenin’ • Memory Garden • Quiet Spring • A Visual Celebration Of Summer • The Lotus Pool • Orchid Talk • Birdie Diner • In Emptiness Is Spiritual Fulfillment   (a section from the book, “The World is in my Garden”) © site post © by Zane Maser, 2021. Photographs gratefully used from Free Images. All 2009-2021 rights of Zane Maser and SunnyCat Astrology reserved worldwide. My editorial master and technological wizard is Chris Maser, my kind-hearted, generous husband.

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“Resurrection is an experience. It’s an experience of truth, and the reason for the Master’s resurrection wasn’t merely to prove that he could be raised up from the dead, or that he could raise himself up from the dead, because what value would that be to us? It was to exemplify his teaching that the dead are to be raised. Whether dead in sin, dead in lack, dead in ignorance, dead in disease—the dead are to be resurrected, raised up into life again. As a matter of fact, the resurrection is the main teaching of all mysticism, all religious teachings, all philosophical teachings. I’m sure with all truth teachings, too, because without resurrection, you really have nothing. You have individuals who are sick, sinning, dying, dead. Without resurrection, that’s where you leave them. You have individuals in the prison of their mentality of thoughts. Without resurrection, that’s where you would leave them. Therefore, the entire race, all [human]kind, must be resurrected eventually, must be raised out of death [in all its varied forms], out of inertia, which is a death in itself, a going on and on, and a continuing on and on in an old pattern—this is inertia. This is death. …It is true that part of our resurrection comes because of Jesus’ experience and his disciples’ and apostles’ experiences. Part of our resurrection comes because we have found spiritual teachers or spiritual practitioners to help us on the way. But, be assured of this that these are just temporary helps. Our resurrection only comes through an activity of our own consciousness. Something must take place within us, which ultimately leads to the Easter day, that is, the actual experience of resurrection. … Now, resurrection is not something that happened to the Master; ascension is not something that happened to the Master. Resurrection and ascension are something that were an actual activity of the consciousness of the Master. And, without this activity, whatever its nature, there would have been no resurrection and no ascension. …Easter is to be an actual experience, an experience of resurrection, in which the “old man” of us is dead. Therefore, we prepare for that each moment of our lives. Just as in planting fruit trees the goal is to have fruit. But, the preparation for it is the planting of the seed, the rain, the sunshine, the fertilizer—all of this is preparation for the ultimate experience of fruitage. Then, there is a three-day period, after which I [the Christ within each of us] raise up this temple again. And then, there is the longer period of preparation for the final experience of ascension above mortality, ascension into Christhood, even while here on earth. Always remember that since Jesus attained Christhood, he was imparting to us the truth, imparting a spiritual principle—that Christhood is also the measure of our individual experience, our goal, our ultimate attainment. And, once we have been initially touched [with a degree of it], we never again can rest until we have attained the full measure.” Joel S. Goldsmith, from a 1964 talk, “Preparation for Easter”   Other Easter Offerings: • Contemplative Thoughts For Easter • Sun Thoughts For Easter • Easter Thoughts by White Eagle • The Lily Work • Arise Anew! • Easter-Ize! © blog post © by Zane Maser, 2021. All 2009-2021 rights of Zane Maser and SunnyCat Astrology reserved worldwide. My editorial master and technological wizard is Chris Maser, my kind-hearted, generous husband.

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A personal sense of self is shaped within the receptacle of family and societally imposed, acceptable norms. A personality is thus shaped by the many expectations, demands, and outer conditioning—often of untold generations—that will govern and very often limit freedom of choice, all in order to comply and fit in. In the evolutionary growth of an individual, there are those very few who arrive at a crossroad that portends a different, unconventional life journey. This is a pivotal moment of consciousness. Do I dare step beyond the bounds? Do I rather choose to embrace the inner dictates and guidance of my heart and soul? Is authenticity the treasure I seek in willingness to release all that no longer serves my true nature? Am I ready to relinquish the false, crafted veil of protection, the one that has projected an external, contrived sense of self? If the answer is yes, step onto the eternal Way. The inner door that has henceforth been closed tight now opens and an untainted light shines. Eventually, when the mask of personal sense drops, the divine Self smiles. At the point when the personal sense has shrunk, there’s no fearful reactivity or protectivity. Freedom from these entangling traps is gained. A personal sense of self tends to compare, which often results in agitation and sometimes despair. The divine Self lives in equanimity and harmony. In the realm of the personal, giving can mean loss in that something is transferred from myself to you. In the realm of Reality, giving is a shift from one pocket to the other pocket with never an incurred loss in any form. The blessing of increase is the result. The personal self divides and dis-includes. The real Self welcomes and embraces all as the One Self—sharing, caring, loving. When the personal sense of self dissolves, Self-autonomy remains. The individual has reclaimed their divine origin, the birthright of all Life. And through such a pioneering example, the door of Self-determination and Self-governance is loosened for others.     When you are united with Spirit, you are king— a king of quietude and bliss, fully satisfied and complete within your Self. Paramahansa Yogananda, beloved master of the East and West   Other Mystical Offerings: • Putting on Your Everyday Face • It’s All Your Choice • Two Choices In Life • Choose Your Fork Of The Path • Buddhist Story of Two Monks, Two Choices • When the Genie’s Bottle Becomes Too Small • The Phase of Relinquishment • The Straight Path • Spiritual Pace • Spiritual Progress © Prose poem © by Zane Maser, 2021. Photos gratefully used from Free Images. All 2009-2021 rights of Zane Maser and SunnyCat Astrology reserved worldwide. My editorial master and technological wizard is Chris Maser, my kind-hearted, generous husband.

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Steps, states of being until we reach the zenith— restful unconcern. Oceanic calm. Waves moved by greater Body that guides surface, depths. Naked winter trees frozen in their iced beauty. Buds of spring await. Birds fly south on cue. In true time northward they speed. Foreseen destiny. Receptive trusting. A fearless orchestration of Self-completeness. A palpable Love is the Self-reliancy that is within you. Each must access it in the still, silent Center. Rest-filled unconcern.     “Within me [and you] is the secret of the universe. Within me [and you] is the whole secret!” Joel S. Goldsmith, from “A Parenthesis in Eternity” And Joel would further add, “Everything has its basis in the Invisible appearing visibly.”   Other Mystical Offerings: • Spiritual Faith • Spiritual Endowment • Spiritually Attended • Constant Care • It’s Already Present • Peace and Plenty • Heaven is Earth • Infinite Heart • “Divine Destiny”   Haiku poetry is the impartation of spiritual principles in few words. © Haiku poem © by Zane Maser, 2021. Photos gratefully used from Free Images. All 2009-2021 rights of Zane Maser and SunnyCat Astrology reserved worldwide. My editorial master and technological wizard is Chris Maser, my kind-hearted, generous husband.

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“I was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment. All at once, without warning of any kind, I found myself wrapped around as it were by a flame-coloured cloud. For an instant, I thought of fire, some sudden conflagration in the great city; the next, I knew that the light was within me. “Directly afterward came upon me a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied by an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe. Into my brain streamed one momentary lightning—flash of the Divine Splendor which has ever since lightened my life; upon my heart fell one drop of Divine Bliss, leaving thenceforward for always an aftertaste of heaven. “Among other things, I [had] not [yet] come to believe: I saw and knew that the Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence, that the soul of man is immortal, that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all, that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love, and that the happiness of everyone in the long run is absolutely certain. “I learned more within the few seconds that illumination lasted than in all my previous years of study, and I learned much that no study could ever have taught.” Walt Whitman   Other Illumined Souls: • Spreading of Blessings: Walt Whitman • Master Healer: Dr. Edward Bach • The Thunder Of Silence”—A Free E-Book    (Joel S. Goldsmith) • God Spoke to Her: Florence Nightingale • A God-Filled Life: Julian of Norwich • Life-Changing Moments    (Mother Teresa) • Heavenly Incarnation: Lord Buddha © site post © by Zane Maser, 2021. Photo gratefully used from Free Images. All 2009-2021 rights of Zane Maser and SunnyCat Astrology reserved worldwide. My editorial master and technological wizard is Chris Maser, my kind-hearted, generous husband.

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Through the developed spiritual eye, we see the heart of an individual and the heart of nature—the heart of a leaf, of a flower, and even of a stone. There is no such thing as dead matter. Everything there is lives and breathes, and everything there is has a soul. There are souls in stones, and there are souls in trees, but these souls are the one Soul interpreted at different levels. Seen materially, a stone is a stone. Seen mentally, a stone can be a weapon. Seen spiritually, a stone is really a little spark of God—a jewel, a gem—and strangely enough, it is incorporeal. It has form, structure, color, and beauty, but it does not have density. So with a tree. A tree has form, light, beauty, color, grace, but it has no density when perceived through the transcendental consciousness. Joel S. Goldsmith, “A Parenthesis in Eternity”   Other Mystical Offerings: • In Truth All Godlings • God’s Artistry • God’s Garden • Colors of the Divine • Spiritual Effects of Beauty • Nature’s Affluence • The Tree That Shares © site post © by Zane Maser, 2021. Photos gratefully used from Free Images. All 2009-2021 rights of Zane Maser and SunnyCat Astrology reserved worldwide. My editorial master and technological wizard is Chris Maser, my kind-hearted, generous husband.

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Walking in the Way is a direct, narrow Path. It’s the summit road. Few there are that tread heights out of the personal sense of fear, love, hate. Few there are who see above the mortal dreamscape of false illusions. Few gain their freedom from the earthly opposites that mask awareness. Is there two or One? A you, me, her, him, them, those, or the same true Self? Within each person a divine Center exists— the middle Axis. Allow for quiet. Leave the rush of outward search. The mind seeks more, more… Only in silence does the Heart faculty speak. Inner ears opened. From a core of Love the Soul eyes discern the Real. There’s only one Way. Your Self and my Self— universally Divine. Walk the Way of Life.   Human beings are too determined to hold on to what they have, and they will not give up their limitation for something unknown. Human nature tries to hold on to the past, to hold on to present limitations. It is unwilling to break through for something else. But while human nature resists change, spiritual unfoldment compels change, breaking up the old patterns continuously. In fact, spiritual progress demands that every form be broken, no matter how good it is, because the spiritual universe has a different set of values from that of the material. It is a “dying” to our humanhood and a “birth” to our spiritual identity. That is not a physical death or birth. It is an act of consciousness.   Joel S. Goldsmith, an illumined teacher and mystic for all centuries ahead Other Mystical Offerings: • The Straight Path • Casting Outward, Casting Inward • Quiet the Clamoring Mind • Are You Able To Be Quiet? • Listening • Spiritual Eyes • The Temple Of Silence • Divinity Remembered • Immoveable Center © Haiku poem © by Zane Maser, 2021. Photos gratefully used from FreeImages and Wikimedia. All 2009-2021 rights of Zane Maser and SunnyCat Astrology reserved worldwide. My editorial master and technological wizard is Chris Maser, my kind-hearted, generous husband.

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On a given day, help arrives in many forms. A book, friend, debt paid. In flawless timing, the right thing, person, guidance comes to smooth the way. Car batteries die. Kind persons come to our aid. Each is a life line. Sickness sometimes is an awakener disguised. The dark night has passed. See that smiling dog? Many angels don’t have wings. Some flash as insights. Open to receive the constant care that awaits. Hear those subtle wings.   Other Mystical Offerings: • Angelic Intervention • Little Angel Band • Unconditional Gifts • The Need Is Known Beforehand • A Neighbor’s Need • That Could Be Me • Words That Uplift • Always Accompanied • Constant Provision © Haiku poem © by Zane Maser, 2021. Photos gratefully used from Wikimedia Commons and Free Images. All 2009-2021 rights of Zane Maser and SunnyCat Astrology reserved worldwide. My editorial master and technological wizard is Chris Maser, my kind-hearted, generous husband.

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Bright Full Moon rising. Yet, wholeness is always there. Now it’s unobscured. See within clearly. Penetrate through appearance. True essence revealed. Unbind your vision. Your Sight is pure already. Let the Moon show you.     Other Mystical Offerings: • Spiritual Eyes • Divinity Remembered • Behind the Appearance Behold the Light • An Oasis of Light • Appearances • Putting on Your Everyday Face  (how we hide behind our astrological Ascendant) © Haiku poem © by Zane Maser, 2020. Photo gratefully used from FreeImages. All 2009-2020 rights of Zane Maser and SunnyCat Astrology reserved worldwide. My editorial master and technological wizard is Chris Maser, my kind-hearted, generous husband.