Jeffery Paine - Enlightenment Town: Finding Spiritual Awakening in a Most Improbable Place

More praise for Enlightenment Town I am not a religious man. Perhaps my few years incarcerated in a South Indian missionary boarding school cured me of this quest. But as Jeffery Paine intimates, even those of us who are postreligious neverthe-less seek some hallowed understanding of the human condition. Paine writes such vivid stories about Crestones eclectic spiritual characters that, I have to confess, I am charmed beyond belief. Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prizewinning biographer and author of The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames Who knew that among the mountains of Colorado there exists a town devoted to enlightenment and boasting twenty-five religious centers, coexisting in perfect amity? How is that possible? In EnlightenmentTown, Jeffery Paine takes us on a journey to meets its unforgettable in-habitants in Airstream trailers, disused mineshafts, and quiet retreats, across nineteen years. Nigel Hamilton, award-winning biographer of JFK, Thomas Mann, Bill Clinton, Bernard Montgomery, FDR, and others and senior fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Boston With warmth, wit, and tenderness, Jeffery Paine introduces us to a remarkable community where the secular and the sacred exist side by side often indistinguishably. Nigel Hamilton, award-winning biographer of JFK, Thomas Mann, Bill Clinton, Bernard Montgomery, FDR, and others and senior fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Boston With warmth, wit, and tenderness, Jeffery Paine introduces us to a remarkable community where the secular and the sacred exist side by side often indistinguishably.

What is it about a small mountain town in Colorado that has drawn Buddhists, Christian mystics, Sufis, and a host of other denominations to live together, not with mere tolerance but with something approaching transcendence? Whatever their secret, the residents of what Paine calls a Wild West Jerusalem have lessons for all of us. Tim Folger, science journalist and series editor of The Best American Science and Nature Writing Whenever we open our hearts with unconditional love and illumine our brains with boundless wisdom, everything arises as the world of enlightenment. Enlightenment Town portrays a true land of Dharma, where this can happen. Tulku Thondup, author of The Healing Power of Mind and The Heart of Unconditional Love In Enlightenment Town, Jeffery Paine takes us on pilgrimage into the heart of what it means to be human. In Crestone, Colorado, home to the worlds most religiously diverse community, we venture high into the mountains on sacred vision quests and into cathartic sweat lodges, and join spiritual activists on the path. atheism and belief vs. nonbelief as we see people living their enlightenment. nonbelief as we see people living their enlightenment.

Joining this pilgrimage, you will be well rewarded. Matteo Pistono, author of In the Shadow of the Buddha and MeditationEnlightenment Town is a lively meditation on the nature of religion and an inquiry into the dynamics of spirituality, articulated with genuine compassion, empathy, and warm, humane humor. A personal and heart-felt exploration of the spiritual, Jeffery Paines quest situates him in the town of Crestone, high in the mountains of central Colorado, where he interacts with a quirky cast of fascinating characters, spiritual beings from diverse traditions Hindu, Tibetan Buddhist, Carmelite Christian, Jewish, Taoist, Native American all of whom have something profoundly in common and each of whom teaches Paine something about the myriad meanings of our relationships with nature and other human beings. As the journey progresses, Paine begins to understand and show us the ways in which everything, no matter how mundane, may be appreciated in some way as sacred. Lee Siegel, author of Love in aDead Language, Trance-Migrations, and other books EnlightEnmEnt town EnlightEnmEnt town Finding Spiritual Awakening in a Most Improbable Place JEffEry PainE New World Library Novato, California New World Library 14 Pamaron Way Novato, California 94949 Copyright 2018 by Jeffery Paine All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Text design by Tona Pearce-Myers Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available. First printing, May 2018 ISBN 978-1-60868-574-5 Ebook ISBN 978-1-60868-575-2 Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper New World Library is proud to be a Gold Certified Environmentally Responsible Publisher. Publisher certification awarded by Green Press Initiative. www.greenpressinitiative.org 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is dedicated tothe men and women and childrenand mountains and streamsof Crestone.God Appears and God is LightTo those poor Souls who dwell in Night,But does a Human Form DisplayTo those who Dwell in Realms of day.William Blake, Auguries of Innocence Contents Overture Part I: Town 1. A Dream Awakens 2. Where the Hell Am I? A Tour Part II: Religion 3.

Gimme That Old-Time Religion! Or Is the New-Time Better? 4. More Religions Than One 5. Fewer Than One Part III: Postreligious Varieties of Experience in Crestone 6. An Ordinary Thursday in Crestone 7. A Sacred Relationship to the Natural World? 8. Equanimity: Spirituality without the Religion 9.

The Mind Electric 10. When There Is Here and Bitter Is Sweet Finale: Near-Enlightenment Experiences in Everyday Life 11. The Look of It, the Feel of It 12. Nine Rungs Up the Ladder to Enlightenment A Note on Dates Second Dedication About the Author Overture Far away, remote from anywhere, lies a place that may open an unexpected window onto what it means spir itually to be human. Not all that long before I first strayed there, this high-mountain hamlet had housed but a few score miners descendants, who when they wanted to eat went out and shot a bear. When I first arrived there, to visit long-unseen friends, I felt I had stumbled onto the set of a budget Western, straight out of Gunsmoke or Bonanza. Little did I suspect then that that cowboy set, that dot tucked away in the distant mountains, would draw me back again and again and become the place where I felt most at home and would eventually form in my head, without my forcing any thing, the book now in your hands.

Back when I first got there, in 1990, I did note the curiosity that a few unusual religious groups Carmelite, Hindu had set up shop in this tiny Colorado town. From those small beginnings would soon flower an unprecedented phenome non. Today the former mining town boasts twenty-five major spiritual centers, representing nearly all the brand names of world religion. Almost all the globes religions cohabiting 2 Enlightenment Town practically under the same roof nothing quite like this had happened before and there I was, lucky enough to witness it unfolding. Sadly, I never could live there, not full-time, year-round a combination of my bad lungs and its too-high altitude but then the Native American Indians, who once made holy pilgrimages there, thought that landscape too harsh for any two-legged creatures to inhabit. For four-legged creatures, and yes birds too, it was always a peachy place to call home.