Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul Quotes

“Perhaps meditation is simply anything we do with our full attention, full awareness, full heart. Anywhere we find truth, or love. Something we do, not to be the fastest, or the best, or to win a prize, or to make a lot of money, but simply because we love it. Whatever it may be.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“Beauty is indeed a choice. Day by day, moment by moment, we choose love or hate, life or death, light or darkness. The seeds for both are contained within all things, both living and nonliving. It all depends on what we focus on. We create our own world. Focus on beauty and beauty you find. Focus on darkness and darkness will prevail. Beauty guides through the heart. Darkness through the mind.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“If we slowed our lives down enough to allow for naps, wouldn’t we all have more enjoyable days, more productive days? Why do our work ethics tells us to work more? Work harder? Work longer? Anything less than eight hours—unacceptable. Towards the end of our workday, how productive are we, really? Are we actually working at that point, or just staring at a computer screen, staring at the clock? Passing the time?”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“I know of no better way to live my life than from the perspective of that old man. The ninety-year-old me. Because I always know what he would say. And it’s never, “I should have worked more, saved more, bought a nicer car, a bigger house, been more responsible.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“Walking. Rhythmic walking. When I’m backpacking I’m backpacking. There is nothing else. No phone to answer, no email to check, no bills to pay, no errands to run. Nothing but backpacking.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“It’s all too easy to assume that the darkness in this world lies outside of ourselves. That others are to blame. Yet only when we learn to see the darkness inside of ourselves, can we hope to develop compassion for the darkness in others. For even the darkest of places contain the seed of light.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“Don’t be one way, Wishing for another, Only to arrive at the new way, Wishing for the first.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“Wilderness is our only hope. The one place we can always come back to.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“What if there were a secret back-door portal to enlightenment? A shortcut, so to speak. I believe that the answer lies here, in wilderness. The shortcut is the long walk. However, you must go it alone. Once you get past the jitteriness of day one, the cravings of day two, and the loneliness of day three, meditation comes easily and naturally. Months of tension can be released in just a few days.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“In our cities of concrete and steel, we’ve removed ourselves from these cycles. We’ve forgotten the circle of life and the interconnectedness of all things. A shift in consciousness is all that is required. Life is abundant, with plenty to go around, until things fall out of balance. We will either evolve, or we will die.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“No matter how bad your life can ever get, how low you can feel, how much society lets you down, you can always come back here. You can always go home. You can lose everything, but no one can take away your Wilderness. She’s always here. Waiting. Ready to welcome you back with open arms. Ready to welcome you home.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“They say that wisdom comes with age. So who could be wiser than the sky, with its eternal sunsets, thunderstorms, stars, galaxies? Who could be wiser than the rocks, these monoliths of stone, witness to all, over the eons of time? There’s an all-knowingness out here. It lies within all this silence and stillness. A wisdom so profound that it transcends words. An understanding so pure it cannot be explained, cannot be taught, nor grasped by the human mind. Only felt. Experienced firsthand. When I tap into this wisdom, a switch is flipped, a reversal happens. My mind, always up front, driving and controlling everything, takes a back seat. And my soul, hiding quietly in the back seat, jumps up to take shotgun.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“National Park. This I must keep reminding myself. Our parks serve a great purpose, not just for preservation, but also as a funnel. The Designated Route. Mobs of tourists, RVs, buses, and family station wagons out on summer vacation need a place to go. Our national parks serve this purpose, complete with entrance fees, advance reservation campgrounds, snack bars, game rooms, bowling alleys, roped-off viewpoints, paved trails, lodges, and reserved backcountry campsites. Permit required. For a fee.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“We come from the Earth. We return to the Earth. It happens over and over and over. You might say, we are the Earth. We’ve only to step away from our world of plastic and concrete to understand.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“I know that the best adventures are often off-trail, and blissful solitude will be guaranteed.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“Wilderness. My problems are over the moment I step out onto the trail, pack loaded, schedule free.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“To hike quickly here would be like racing through an art gallery. -- Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul, Scott Stillman”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“I offer my love back: to the Wilderness, the desert, the tinajas, the rocks, the sun, the moon and the stars, and to Mother Earth. After all we’ve taken, her love is still stronger than ever. Beyond all else we must remember who we are, where we come from, and where we will return. There comes a time when we must make our pilgrimage. Leave our houses, our cities of concrete and steel, and make our journey back to Wilderness”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“What is it about this place? What is it about this desert? I search for an answer but come up dry, like always. There is something here beyond words. Something unexplainable. A presence. Something living, breathing. Listening.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“But if we take away our story, our past, what’s left? Searching for an answer, we pick up a spiritual book, surf the web, call up a friend. We run! What if we just stopped? Felt the breeze on our face, the sun on our back. Focused on the lighting, the shapes, the colors.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“At the first itch of loneliness we pick up the phone, log onto the internet, knock at the neighbor’s door, or start a project. What about boredom, depression, anger, sadness? We run. Constantly we’re running from our emotions. Our society is one of quick fixes. There’s a pill for depression, a gadget for boredom, social media for loneliness, the pub for sadness. We are afraid of being with our emotions. We are afraid of being with ourselves.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“How much better to simply let things be as they are, and witness life with a sense of humor? It is quite silly, after all.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“The secret to life is now. In every living moment. Whatever that moment may look like.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“I was born to walk the Earth, experience the amazing beauty of this planet, and witness the splendor and magic of all things—to be overwhelmed by a ray of sunlight, touched by an encounter with a frog, and mystified by the texture of a rock wall. I was born to splash through the creeks, sing through the canyons, laugh with the squirrels, just as I did as a small child in the woods behind our family’s home. I was born to be a kid, and not take life too seriously, or get sidetracked by a career, a project, or anything that ties me down to the life of bills, shiny new toys, status, and pavement.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“Work? Stress? Bills? The past? What past? Everything is perfect now, And when is it ever not now?”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“I’m not here to tame or conquer, I’m here to connect. To find the gateway. I know it’s out here. If I’m not careful I could miss it.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“I find that when I open up and surrender to the present moment, accepting it for all its beauty and amazement, the universe guides me to all the right places. Decisions are just decisions. Either answer is correct. Just choose. The universe will take care of us, provided we are grateful, aware. It’s when we fight the present moment that the universe turns against us. Nothing goes our way. Every decision is wrong. We get caught up in our minds, our egos. “If only I had done this, or done that.” Life becomes a struggle.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“When we learn to seek light in the darkest of places, and brighten it with our own, only then can we hope to evolve.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“We realize that the world is not against us, but here to support us, love us, and guide us along. We’ve”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness

“The secret to life is now. In every living moment. Whatever that moment may look like. When I finally stop, look around, and see, Actually see for the first time, All the grace and beauty in this world, I realize something profound. The beauty has been here all along, Waiting for me to get out of my head, And into life. Patiently the world awaits. Waiting to celebrate our enlightenment. When we awake, the world wakes up with us, And the entire world is changed in an instant.”
― Scott Stillman, Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness