The Luminous Age

The Sanskrit word you may have heard “Tantra” has many meanings and connotations.

I was happy to discover a translation of it which simply means “To Weave”. Tantra, to me, is about interdependence and the ability to keenly and kindly work with the interwoven stories, perceptions, and experiences of our lives with a full approach and understanding of what is needed and what is not. The fulfillment of this, then quite naturally, is revealed to be nothing other than awareness itself; that is to say that whatever our challenges and the fulfillment of those challenges is, is not separate from Truth.

This text, revealed during a stay at a Cabin near Cottonwood Creek in Crestone, CO and then expanded on through abundant collaboration, was initially inspired by two friends asking if i could create/write something like this. Though it is worth mentioning that studies into the Avatamsaka Sutra, and other sutras & termas of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition point out that texts like these are not authoritatively “written” but revealed at the right time, and in the case of most sutras, connect back to the life and times of Buddha. This text, very much like the Avatamsaka Sutra is connected to Vairochana; the Buddha of Boundless Light.

It isn’t rigorously philosophical ; which was the intention. It is a weaving together of stories and experiences interacting with various elders, monks, nuns, temples, spiritual centers, and animals in the San Luis Valley. It centers on the recognition of luminosity, or unbounded wakefulness as a traveler meets with different teachers, elders, and experiences on that path of realization.

In the Avatamsaka Sutra, Sudhana meets with 53 teachers before coming to the final “Entry into the Realm of Reality” , the final chapter of the sutra, which also reveals boundless love, or boundless light as the final stage of his life path and the fulfillment of those many teachings.

This book is a journey both outer and inner, a pilgrimage through the sacred landscapes of the San Luis Valley and through the five great elements that shape all life. It begins with earth and mountain, moves through waters and rivers, rises with fire and flame, flows with air and sky, and finally dissolves into ether, luminous space itself. Each chapter is not only description but offering—prose and poetry, vision and silence, woven together as a guide to the reality that is always present.

The reader is invited to walk slowly through these pages, as one would walk a pilgrimage path. Each element brings its own teaching: stability, flow, transformation, freedom, and openness. Each is mirrored in the land, in the temples and stupas of Crestone, in the songs of wind and water, in the prayers of pilgrims, in the silence of night. And each is mirrored within the reader, for these elements are not outside us, but our very nature.

Descending was like returning to another world. The air grew warmer, the forest returned, birdsong broke the silence. Yet the mountain remained within me, its clarity still like snow in the heart. When I reached the valley floor,

I looked back once more. The clouds had lifted, and for a moment the summit shone pure and white against the blue. Then the mist closed again, hiding it from sight. The pilgrim’s words echoed: “The summit is not the teaching. The mountain itself is the teaching.”

And so it is with life. The goal is not apart from the path. Each step is the teaching, each breath the summit.

A final prayer arose:

May the strength of White Shell Mountain

Awaken in all beings.

May clarity be their crown, patience their robe,

And compassion their path.

As snow returns to water, and water to sky,

May all return to the expanse of awareness,

Free and luminous as the mountain itself.

The memory of the mountain stayed with me long after I descended. Its vastness was not something left behind on the ridge; it pressed inward, as if my own chest had become a summit, my own heart a peak crowned with snow. Every breath since then carried the coolness of altitude, the clarity of high air. Blanca Peak, Sisnaajiní, the White Shell Mountain— it was no longer only a place in the distance but a presence within.

The Luminous Age is available on Amazon with two different cover designs, and will also soon feature art by Eric Horner and other friends of the valley.

If you would like a copy in person but not from Amazon, let me know and I would be happy to offer you one in Crestone ; and perhaps it could be the spark for a new set of adventures and visions on the Path.

The Luminous Age Colorful Cover

The Luminous Age Black Cover

The Five Elements: A Pathway of Revelation

This book unfolded according to the five great elements— earth, water, fire, air, and ether—each explored in its own chapter. The elements were not chosen arbitrarily. They revealed themselves as the architecture of the journey, the steps of a mandala unfolding. To walk with them was to walk a path of awakening.

**Earth** revealed itself in White Shell Mountain, Blanca Peak, Sisnaajiní. The mountain was guardian, axis, temple of stone and snow. It taught patience, endurance, humility. It reminded us that solidity is itself a teaching—that to bow to earth is to bow to our own body.

**Water** spoke through springs, rivers, and lakes. It revealed healing, clarity, and release. Water reminded us of generosity and patience, receiving all without clinging. The Rio Grande carried prayers to the sea, teaching that no offering is ever lost.

**Fire** came alive in the circles of cedar and flame, in the visions of phoenix and cosmic fire. Fire consumed, yes, but always to transform. It taught devotion, clarity, renewal. It reminded us that lineage itself is fire, passed from hearth to hearth, never extinguished.

**Air** revealed itself in wind and sky, in the dawning of Aquarius. It carried voices, prayers, songs. It reminded us that breath itself is sacred, shared by all beings. Air taught freedom not as isolation but as communion. It revealed the new age as collective awakening.

**Ether**—luminous space—was culmination. It revealed itself in silence, in Indra’s Net, in the infinite openness of awareness. Space was not emptiness but fullness. It was the realm of reality, the recognition that all things interpenetrate. The final teaching was this: we are already luminous space, already home. Together, these five elements formed a mandala of practice, each chapter a petal, each element a doorway. The journey through them was not linear but cyclical, not progressive but inclusive. To enter one is to enter all.

The path and the goal are not two.

May all beings live in beauty.