This trip was the next in a long series of ascents Aron Ralston and I have shared over the years. This one in particular to RMNP, was to return to where it all began 20 years ago when we summited Longs Peak, the fourteener that sparked our lifelong passion for mountaineering.

What I love about climbing in the high country is that the mountains are full of life lessons that are taught viscerally and dynamically as one foot is placed in front of the other with your head in the clouds. When you hit altitude, legs and lungs burning, the body wants to stop. That is when the mind pushes on, and when the present moment requires maximum focus.

Going with the flow

Plans for a 2 am departure for Longs Peak were derailed by heavy rain. Knowing this was a possibility we pushed the departure back to a relaxed 7 am, destined for Glacier Gorge around Black Lake between the towering Longs peak to the east and McHenry’s peak to the west. While there was no lightening in the morning we wanted to avoid at all costs getting caught at high altitude without a quick walk off.

From the trailhead we departed with plan B, meaning we didn’t know what the destination was but we’d find out how high in the peaks the weather would allow us to get. No expectations, only discovery and adventure.

We were deep in the clouds all morning, when mist transitioned to rain we donned what was initially a joke but is now the tried and true Mountaineering Umbrella. Not a good tool when electricity or wind are likely but in today’s east coast-style drizzle it was perfect—and hilarious!

#MountaineeringUmbrella photo by Aron Ralston

The Path Emerges

At about 11,000′ altitude and 5 miles into the ascent, Aron and I pulled over to intermit over coconut chocolate Pro Bars. We stopped about 500 feet above Black Lake amid a misty flower-filled run-off. Aron spotted the perfect perch across the stream and I endeavored to join him. The weather had been misting and raining all morning so I approached the rock perch round-aboutly to avoid walking through calf-deep grass that would soak my shoes with dew.

I made my route along some river stones while I patted myself on my back for being clever enough to find such a creative route—until I turned the corner and there was no more route, only running water. I hesitated, looking around at the prospect of getting myself back out of the streambed and seeing only soaking wet options all around me.

How many times does that happen in life? You’re going down a path and all of a sudden you don’t know where to go? Progress hits a standstill. What do you do?

About to give up and backtrack, I took one last step forward onto a small stone protruding just above the glassy meniscus. I looked around the bend and as if the universe was playing a joke on me, a big boulder appeared, previously just out of view when I was in my doubt state.

Where there was no path, a path appeared.

Ahh, I remember. Faith in the flow.

Avoiding the Krummholz

As we continued above tree line, the existing hiking trail came to an end at the base of a tundra marsh on the way towards the boulder field. We did our best to navigate on the wet slabs instead of the marshy grass to preserve what dryness remained in our shoes but at times we had to tally-ho through.

Krummholz is a type of tree that grows just at this subarctic zone that protects itself from the fierce freezing winds by clumping together behind rocks and in large groupings.

You do not want to get caught into a large batch of krummholz! It is a thick quagmire of branches just below the surface of fir needles. You can’t see your feet, there are tons of tripping hazards and you may or may not even be stepping on the ground depending on how deep you are.

As we traverse towards the most amicable route against the steepening ascent, Aron explains his experience once falling through what seemed like the ground, sinking in over his head and splayed in between branches in the darkness. It was a real mess to get out of.

Instead, he said, you have to look for the existing path through the krummholz. The elk and moose thankfully have the sense to cut through the most friendly patches of this knee timber so look for their path instead of forging your own.

Lesson in business and in life: If you can not avoid the krummholz find an existing path through it, else you may be stymied, potentially enough to jeopardize your whole ascent. Do not take such patches—proverbial or otherwise—for granted, they can be a resource-sucking quagmire.

SUMMITING

Just as we approached the col, where the ridge line breaks to a steep cliff, the cloud bank began to swirl and lift! After not seeing more than 50 feet all morning against the mist-ical clouds, the craggy arête appears! The fiercely exposed summit of The Spearhead emerges!

Spearhead emerges from the lifting clouds

The cloud cover swept out of the valley in a swift gust of clear air, seemingly just for us. Now with a window of increased visibility, no rain and the summit in sight, we reflected on the amazing timing of our arrival at the col during the only weather opening all day. I took that as a little wink from the universe.

Having the perspective now of 1000 feet below and 1000 above, I took in the magnitude of the alpine cirque all around me. The sight was totally overwhelming. At that moment I felt a deep fear about the exposure along the summit ridge.

Photo by Aron Ralston

It has been a long time since I’ve been that afraid, but I did not come this far to not attempt the summit—especially after the miraculous parting of the clouds.

Photo by Aron Ralston

Arriving at the peak, I see what Aron has been telling me about. The actual peak of Spearhead (12,575’) is what appears to be a pile of queen-bed sized boulders perched precariously above a straight 500 foot drop into the shadow of neighboring Longs Peak (14,259’) and Chiefs Head Peak (13,579’). “Ho-ly shit!”

Holding on, we looked over the edge to soak in the marrow of this alpine theatre. It was terrifying and exhilarating. I am a new man. I got what I needed. Hard reset—and a new appreciation for the magnitude of nature and this planet.

The energy at the peak was palpable. Before we left, I sat for a moment in my meditation where I ping love against my wife’s heart from wherever I am. When we do this it sends out ripples of love in every direction. My intention was to broadcast Love her and to Jung’s collective unconscious.

On the trip down I could not stop thinking about how amazing the summit was—but then I remembered it’s not about the past. It’s about right now.

The view from Spearhead and the cloud we had been in all day.

The high altitude puts me into a meditation where my very existence requires every ounce of mindfulness I have. The lack of oxygen, the tricky footwork through the boulder field, the wet, lichen-covered slabs—the path requires all of my energy and I don’t have time for all that mental chatter of life. And that is the point where I find complete silence. That is what I came here looking for: Absolute presence, mindfulness and silence.

Peaking–over and over again

Twenty years ago, when Aron and I first came up to this high country, we had no idea how life changing it would be. Mountaineering is not for everyone, it has to be in your blood. It is grueling, painful and dangerous but if you can stomach one step at a time, you gain the privilege of perspective from the highest peaks and bring those lessons back to life–the powerful practices of ascending, testing our limits, training our mindfulness and sharpening the sword.

- by Jon Heinrich

Now is the time when our decisions and choices in life start to catch up with us. Life is all cause and effect. Or as that famous Yogi in the Bible put it: ‘Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.”

We see this theme of cause/effect in nearly all religions in the world, in classic Newtonian physics and now more than ever, quantum physics has proved that “life is in the eye of the beholder.”

In short, “thoughts become things” so “Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” (Prov. 4:23)

One of my main goals in life is to spread Awareness. I am not perfect, but I try very hard to cultivate a very intentional, powerful, creative life and through those ventures, I have discovered a great deal of knowledge available to anyone with a library card. Seeking spirit or not, we are all human so inevitably we are all graced with life’s ups and downs, all the while, revealing the human experience.

As I’ve approached this milestone marker of my fortieth birthday and looked in the mirror, I’ve been thinking about what key decisions I have made that have contributed most to my healthy state of being.

That being the case, here are 11 lifestyle choices to help inspire tomorrow with healthful and wealthful giving to thyself today, as to reap that health and wealth tomorrow. The choices fall into three main categories: Body, Mind and Spirit:

Body:

#1 – Your body is your Temple, treat it with the greatest respect

In 2003 I interviewed acclaimed jazz pianist Brian Hass for Meniscus Magazine and he told me something that turned into a piece of my existence: Haas said:

“Jesus said, your body is a temple. If you treat your body like a temple, it spreads into the rest of your life. Every aspect of your life becomes holy; everything you do is holy.

“The mind, body and soul are connected,” Haas continued. “If you don’t allow your body to operate at its full potential, how do we even know what our minds are capable of? I’m all about living like a real human and realizing my full potential..I want to be the best human I can be…We have to turn ourselves into superheroes, we have to turn ourselves into ultra-humans. We have to find our true potential.”

The best way to keep the temple clean, is to understand you have control, which leads us to step #2…

#2- Discipline the Robot

Your body is a robot and you have to make the choose whether you are going to tell it what to do, or it is going to tell you what to do.

There are terrible epidemics of obesity, cancer and heart disease in this country and much of it has to do with food addictions.

Most people are addicted to food. That few seconds of flavor from that bite of potato chip, bacon, corn bread, cup cake, doughnut, soda…all of that highly addictive junk food eventually will catch up to the body in the form of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer not to mention your body and mind will be clogged full of junk. “You are what you eat” so those who thrive on processed food will constantly be “over fed and under nourished” and will never reach their full potential.

So you have to make a choice: Am I going to let the robot control me via my tastebuds?

My choice has been to eat a macrobiotic diet consisting of vegetables, whole grains and a little fish; no meat or dairy. The stuff I eat is probably “earthy” to most people. However because I have trained my tastebuds to appreciate the nutrients and not the sugar, it is delicious. On the contrary, if I eat a Duncan Doughnut or God forbid a diet soda, all I can taste is the chemicals. I don’t taste any real food, and my body is trained to reject it.

#3 Fast and Detox your Temple

The best way to reset your control over the robot and cleanse the body is to fast. I know, this sounds crazy, “not eat for 3-6 days?! How is that possible,” you ask? “I get light headed after missing dinner for 1 hour!”

By abstaining from food for significant periods of time, your body has a chance to turn its immune attention towards breaking down toxins in the system that, if left unattended to, could manifest into any number of diseases.

As Paul Bragg explains in The Miracle of Fasting, there is a Vital Force that is used every day of your life to maintain your body’s processes. In addition to pushing blood through millions of filters in your kidneys and exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide in your lungs, a large percentage of this energy goes towards digesting food through your 30-foot digestive tract. Once you stop eating, this Vital Force begins recharging and is freed up tove move throughout the body breaking down poisonous residues that have built up. Even after just 24 hours, the body is able to begin rebuilding Vital Force.

Aside from fasting, there are many ways to detox on a regular basis. One of my favorite, easy things to do is this: Each day upon waking, drink a pint of water in the morning with a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice, one hour (or as long as possible) before your coffee or breakfast. (Make sure you use a straw and brush your teeth after the mixture! The acids can be bad for your tooth enamel.)

You can also find natural, herb-based cleanses on the market like this seven-day cleanse from Arbonne.

#4 Cultivate Awareness

Now that you’ve got your body cleaned out, you’ll start to see you have a very clear mind, which brings us to the next stage in the positive cause/effect cycle: Awareness. Actually, more specifically the best place to start here is awareness of awareness.

Now that you have control of the robot you can start taking control of other rituals that may or may not be spinning your cause/effect cycle in a positive direction.

- Exercise: There is no shortage of benefits to exercise, get yourself on a schedule and train the robot to get out there at least a few times a week.
- Negative people: Who in your life is it time to step away from? Your awareness will help you see the cause/effect they have on you.
- Emotional intelligence: Knowing that we are emotional creatures, when do you need to step away from a situation before it drives you to a regrettable outburst. (I.e. An “amygdala hijacking”)
- Career navigation: Once you have this awareness, you can start to see how other people’s robots react to professional situations. If you rise above and always make your moves from a very intentional, logical place, you’ll start to see you have more professional freedom than before—to get a raise, to move companies, or to move into new industries all together.
- Helping the whole planet: The best benefit comes when we all have a greater Awareness of how our daily choices affect the planet, and therefore every one of us, especially our future generations.

The benefits of Awareness are endless, and the next step is to start to refine how you incite Action into the universe to get what you want. The gateway to this manifestation is of course, the mind.

Mind:

Einstein proved that everything is made up of energy in his famous equation E=mC2. We also know the human mind can affect energy.

As far back as the early 1800’s, Quantum physics established that the behavior of particles actually changes depending the observer.

In 1803, Thomas Young discovered what would become the cornerstone of modern quantum physics. In his double-slit experiment, he shot a single particle of light towards two slits in a plate. He was trying to determine whether light traveled as a wave or as a particle. What he found is that when he changed his hypothesis, the particle would change its path.

This experiment opened up many questions. What the quantum physics community determined since then is that the physical world of matter and energy respond to our thinking on a subatomic level.

The mind is part of the robot. Most people think their mind is them, but it is actually just another organ running in the background like your liver, kidneys and heart. Now that we have a clean temple, and the power of Awareness, we can start crafting the mind to support our positive cause/effect cycle.

#5 Work with your subconscious mind

Florence Scovel Shinn, a pioneer of the New Thought movement, stated that “The imagination has been called, ‘The Scissors of the Mind,’ and it is ever cutting, cutting, day by day, the pictures man sees there, and sooner or later he meets his own creations in his outer world.”

And to know what creations we should expect in our outer world, she reminds of us what the Greeks said: “Know Thyself.”

What we are creating in our imagination is not always a conscious decision. The subconscious mind is running in the background at all times. It is the operating system that you don’t even see. So if your operating system is running a poverty mantra, or a guilt complex, or a I-don’t-deserve-it paradigm, our power as creators will manifest that poverty, guilt and lack in our lives. However if we program our subconscious with positive mind treatments and acknowledge our place in the universe as acting with and as a part of God, then we can harness the creative power of the universe.

As Earnest Holmes said, “Whatever the mind of man can conceive, it can achieve.”

More on this topic soon, as a part of my new 40 goals, I am going to work on getting more of this information out, stay tuned.

#6 Know that God is within (and feel good about that!)

To truly bring divine power to your creative ability, know this:

There is one Divine power and presence in life. You can call It God, Infinite Intelligence, the Force, what ever you connect with. That Infinite Intelligence is operating in, around and through you. You are in a divine partnership with that Divine Intelligence and every part of your life is one with God. Embrace this Divine presence and know that the creative power of the universe is within you. Your job is to direct It’s creative potential in any way you would like. Just know that you direct that Divine Creative Power whether you are aware of that or not. So think good thoughts, and Good shall come.

I have never been all that religious. In fact, I don’t like organized religion at all. It started with good intentions many centuries ago, but now most world religions are loaded with dogma and limitation that does not serve our highest potential. That said, I do study the world religions to find the needles of wisdom among the haystack of the ages.

One of those great gems is this statement by JC, He said: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”

For some reason, when I bring this up in conversations with Christians, they have a lot of resistance to that idea that the Kingdom was within man. To me, it is crystal clear: God is within, so instead of praying to some entity out there in the sky, we pray with every word we speak, every day: “By your words ye are justified and by your words ye are condemned.”

As Shinn pointed out, “There is always plenty on man’s pathway: but it can only be brought into manifestation by desire, faith or the spoken word. Jesus Christ brought out clearly that man must make the first move.”

“Ask, and it shall be given you, seek, and ye shall find, knock, and it shall be opened you.” (Mat. 7:7)

#7 Meditate

So now that we know that the mind can literally affect the subatomic particles that make up everything around us, and we understand that the Infinite Divine power of creation is within, how do we clean out that subconscious mind and start churning out some positive cause/effect into our life?

One of my favorite yoga instructors, Yogi Charu, once said something that really stuck with me: “We brush our teeth, we wash our hair, but we never clean our mind.” Of all the important bodily functions, most of us do not consider our “mental hygiene.”

The only way to calm the mind down and actually see it for what it really is, is to meditate.

The most frequent response I get when talking about meditation is “I can’t do it—I can’t sit there and think about nothing for more than a few seconds.” What I would say to that is, it’s not about the result of having a clear mind, free from thoughts, it is about the practice of watching the mind in action and from there we’ll be able to start seeing the mind for what it is: another organ in our body.

We are not our mind.

The best analogy I’ve heard about meditation is to picture yourself laying on your back watching the clouds go by on a blue sky. Each cloud is a thought. Now ideally you sit down and focus on the breathe and try and just look at the blue sky, the silence, the breath. Only the breath. However as far as I know that is impossible. Inevitably there is a cloud that comes by, interrupting the azure above. That’s ok, a thought comes in, you watch it go across your purview, then it is gone, and back to blue sky.

The reason that is so powerful, is you start to realize there is something outside of your brain that is You. There is your mind and then there is You, which you start to get to know once your mind finally shuts the hell up for a moment. (Damn thing is running non-stop! Shut up brain!

In this way, there is nothing as powerful for understanding the mind than meditation.

This is such an important step in cultivating your super powers as a human being.

Spirit:

#8 Acknowledge the Spirit

The other cardinal cornerstone of the happy life is acknowledging and working with the spirit. About an arm’s length around our physical body is our spirit body. If you cleanse your body, purify your mind and spend enough time meditating, you can start to connect to the more subtle energies of the spirit realm. Ask me to define what that really means? I can’t. But I do know it is worthy of a lifetime of study.

Call it God, call it the Universe, the Force, what ever you will, it is the everything that is all, that is One, that is no thing. And if you follow Quantum Physics into it, you will see the mystics have been correct this whole time:

We are all connected by an unseen force.

Take some time each day to connect with that greater Source energy and greater synchronicity will start to unfold, allowing you to bring out the gifts that only you bring to the world.

#9 Beware of The Illusion

Now that we have Awareness of our power to control the body, purify the mind and work with the spirit, we can start to step out of the day-to-day distractions that constantly pull us back into mental chaos and drama.

There are a million things out there to distract us. Thousands of products vying for our dollars. We’ve got Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. Drama playing through people’s emotions that have little or nothing to do with what is happening right now. News media inciting fear and prejudice on a 24-hour cycle. Doctors prescribe drugs to dull the psyche, put us to sleep, or make us “normal.” Energy vampires seeking to suck your energy and pull you down.

Through the tools we’ve discussed, you now have the ability to see through what the Hindu mystics call the Illusion, or the Maha Maya. The more you use the tools of Awareness, Meditation and harnessing of the Divine within, the more your own intuition will heighten and it is in there, that you’ll discover the gifts you have to give to the world.

Think of the illusion as the flock of sheep being led off a cliff. All of the sheep think it is the cool thing to do because they are following the sheep in front of them. And it creates a great deal of effort to turn around and go against the flow. But so long as you stay part of that flock, the only footsteps you’ll tread are ones that have already been beaten down by minds before you.

#10 Don’t do what you’re told

From the moment we are born, people have an opinion about what they think is best for us. Growing up, our parents want us to follow a certain path, go to an in-state college (because they love us :), our friends encourage us to do what’s cool, we want to be accepted, society reinforces our existing paradigms, and marketers push trends.

If you are going to find out who you really are, you can’t blindly follow what other people expect of you. Do not obey. Don not do what you’re told. Do not stay in your comfort zone. Move out of state. Travel internationally. Don’t marry “in your tribe”. Read lots of books from people you agree with and disagree with. Do not discount anyone or any thought based on what “they” think.

No one who ever did anything revolutionary followed the rules. Some of the greatest minds of our time went against the grain and dropped out of school despite everyone telling them it was a bad idea. Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, John D. Rockefeller, Walt Disney, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates all went against popular advice and dropped out of school.

Get out of conventional wisdom as much as possible and then you’ll start to welcome the insight from within, to be the best person you can be.

After all, if you do not bring your own gifts to the world, no one else will. Each one of us has something unique to bring to the planet, and no one finds that unique gift without a healthy sense of adventure and discontentment of how things are now.

#11 Love

The final, and perhaps most important trait to living a healthy, wealthy, joyus, blessed life is love. All of our decisions in life either come from a place of love or a place of fear.

My favorite Beatle Yogi said it best:

“That’s it really; it’s all love, whichever way you look at it, it’s all love. How much you can Get from each other and that’s determined by how much you’re Giving to each other… But it all starts Within our self and then it spreads to those around us, Good & Bad. But basically that’s it, I think it’s the Love that we can generate is = to the Love that we get back.
Amen”
― George Harrison, Cloud Nine

40 years, in conclusion

I have done my best to search out and follow these 11 approaches to life. I constantly work to cleanse the body, cultivate the mind and embrace the spirit and as I turn this grand milestone of 40 years old, I am enlivened by the thought of life. I want us all to be the superhumans that we were born to be.

Every birthday, just like every day, is a new opportunity to set new cause/effect into motion.
I wish you all the best of success in building a healthy, wealthy, joyous, blessed tomorrow by planting the seeds of body, mind and spirit today. I encourage you to harness your Divine partnership with the great Infinite Intelligence in the universe, to be present and live intentionally each and every day, to tap into the greater Spirit to find out who you truly are, and to give your unique gifts to the world.

God Bless and good luck!

- By Jon Heinrich

Thank you for finally stepping out of the centuries-old mold and bringing the Church around to tolerance and unconditional love. I am SURE Jesus would agree with your comments on gay marriage, you are right, who are any of us to judge?

I would like to propose another change that has been carved in stone for some time, the Sign of the Cross. There is something that is just not right, that we mention only the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

No one on this planet—especially Jesus—has ever done one single thing without the help of a woman. Women are the key to our survival and procreation on this planet. So why does the Sign of the Cross deliberately omit Mother Mary from this most common prayer? There are even four spaces for the hand gestures (up, down, left, right.)

She is most certainly divine as she was chosen to be the worldly vessel of “God’s only son” in the immaculate conception. Does she not deserve the recognition as part of the Holy family?

Perhaps it is more accurate that the Holy Spirit is reached through the union of the Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine, which is the secret of Creation on this planet.

Please consider it, dearest Francis, this is a time of awakening and the more we invite the Divine Feminine into our lives, the more balanced and intuitive we will all become,

Respectfully submitted,

with love,

Below: The Virgin Mary hears news of her future from God’s right hand man, Angel Gabriel. “Talk about a mind job!”

Fra Angelico’s The Annunciation (c. 1438): Virgin Mary meets the Angel Gabriel to be told she will give birth to Jesus Christ.

- By Jon Heinrich