Ronald L. Barnett

Welcome to Hey World - a home for my writings, much of it autobiographically-inspired. My hope is that they entertain, educate, and inspire. I’m simpatico with Enid Sinclair who told Wednesday Addams, ‘’I write in my voice. It’s my truth!” I hope you enjoy them. And if you subscribe and have comments, I’d love to hear from you.

I received the Doctorate in Psychology (concentration in human cognition and learning) and after 5 years working as a community-based mental health clinician, I worked in medical research with the National Institutes of Health for the remainder of my career.

I served Contemplative Outreach, Ltd. (CO) as a teacher, group facilitator, retreat leader, Chapter Coordinator, Board Member and Trustee and taught with The Miksang Institute for Contemplative Photography.

As of 2020 I retired, hosted the podcast All Things Contemplative, and still volunteer with CO. I also facilitate Charis Circles with the Charis Foundation for the New Monasticism and Interspirituality - and enjoy information technologies, photography, nature, swimming, biking, and kayaking.

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ronald.barnett
Miksang Contemplative Photography https://ronaldbarnett.smugmug.com
All Things Contemplative Podcast https://allthingscontemplative.buzzsprout.com/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/rbarnett7/
Lifespring - early blog 2009-2020 https://lifespring.posthaven.com/

February 20, 2025

The Good Eye Opens: A Miksang Journey

It’s a delight to say I’ve finished authoring a new book, 50+ Miksang contemplative photographs I’ve “taken” over 12 years. Below is its Introduction. And here is an online, image-by-image Flipbook. Best viewed full screen. If you’d like it as a PDF please let me know. I hope you enjoy them. Cheers - Ron Introduction Twelve years ago I...

February 13, 2025

Winter Sightings

February 7, 2025

I Had a Dream, or Was It?

The Night I had dream, I think. In it I was in the presence of a spiritual master I once knew. He had long since left the planet, I think. He’s gone forever, I think. I think I will never see him again. In this dream no words were exchanged between us. It was clear as day to me that no words were needed but this was never “said”. He as...

January 24, 2025

Special Teachers

On the journey of life everyone learns, and sometimes from teachers. Certain teachers stand out to us as highly memorable, lasting influencers and sources of inspiration, motivation and selfless transmitters of grace. This can happen at home with parents, in formal education, or during mental health care. Here are such teachers that ar...

January 20, 2025

The Privilege of Friendship

‘’The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement neither of the other or of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness. The privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another. To have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have ...

January 18, 2025

Contemplative Listening and Speaking

Hey Friends - co-facilitating a Charis Meditation Circle has me tuning-in anew to what it means to listen and speak with maximum receptivity. 1) Listening itself can be a contemplative disposition, an exercise of attentiveness and reverence…which awakens our inmost self. Such listening is not only to the external words but beyond them…...

December 26, 2024

2024 Contemplative Photographs

As part of an end of the year review I looked through the miksang (Tibetan for good or pure eye) contemplative photographs (MCPs) I made during 2024. MCPs are expressions of seeing the visual world sans thoughts of the past (memories), the future (plans, imaginings, expectations), and free of beliefs, judgements and opinions - simply d...

December 24, 2024

Sunshine in Human Form

I'm preparing a post about the contemplative dimension of nature but until it's ready here's a short one. It's Christmas Eve and my thoughts have turned to Bernie O'Shea. Who? Bernie was a Trappist monk and monastic brother of Thomas Keating (TK), my meditation teacher. Here's part of TK's assessment of how Bernie lived his life: "I ne...

December 15, 2024

Contemplative Photography: The Good Eye Opens - Part II

To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things. - Eihei Dogen, 13C In Part I, I spoke of the influences that shaped how I see the visual world. I also said I began to study with The Miksang Institute of Contemplative Photography and did for more than 10 years. While I learned many things from my teachers, Michael Wo...

December 8, 2024

Contemplative Photography: Awakening to What Is - Part I

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is…” - William Blake Early Years. My journey on the path of contemplative photography began in childhood before I knew the word contemplative or took photographs. The reason? My parents, both visual designers, unknowingly shaped my early perception of how I see. M...

December 5, 2024

The Jew at the Monastery: An Interspiritual Tale

A very devout Jew dressed in all black Hasidic attire arrived for an overnight visit at a Christian monastery. He had hopes of meeting a famous monk (Thomas Merton) who lived there. As darkness neared it appeared that no one was at home. On approaching the gatehouse he saw a long rope that was connected to a large bell. To ring the bel...

November 24, 2024

Exploring the Meaning of Shrines

What is a Shrine? Shrines are physical manifestations, externalizations of meaning. They can have secular or religious significance, serving as tangible expressions of ideas, memories, ideals and feelings. It is as if some meanings have an intrinsic “nature” to express themselves and shrines are one way they do so. When people awaken t...

November 20, 2024

The Mayor Will See You Now

For decades I have swam for health and fitness (physical and mental). For the past seventeen years I have swam at the same pool, a short drive from my home. Over time, I’ve come to know the staff and swimmers quite well. People come and go but at any given time there is a stable, sizable aggregate of people who I see five days a week. ...

November 19, 2024

A Dream

I had attended an event and was driving home alone on an Interstate highway when I encountered a detour. The detour went into a mountainous region and I drove in it for a while, but began to worry that I had missed the road that would return me to the Interstate. I tried to use a GPS app to return to the Interstate but the app failed. ...

November 16, 2024

Announcing a New Meditation Charis Circle

Hello Readers - It’s our delight to announce that a new online Charis Circle is forming and that Deb Quinn and I will serve as its facilitators. What are Charis Circles? They are non-hierarchical ‘’…small, interspiritual practice communities…featuring a communal practice of Charis Meditation…and serve to feed a deep hunger for spiritua...

November 13, 2024

Intelligence: Human, Non-Human and Divine

What is intelligence? As I developed from childhood through adulthood my understanding of it has changed, beginning in grade school. Human. As a young boy in the third grade, I lived in Lexington, Kentucky where I knew a boy who lived down the street. His name was Chris Wolfe. People said Chris had an extremely high IQ – like “genius”....

October 20, 2024

Words to a Dying Wife

‘’It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. …When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self conscious per...

October 18, 2024

The Rings of Saturn - Not Exactly

I’ve never been a big fan of rings - excessive ornamentation - except when married of course. Plus what if one is caught in a piece of moving machinery and dislocates or breaks a finger or worse? What accounts for this firmly entrenched behavior of going ringless after so many decades? Meet Oura 4 a new body sensor that monitors activi...

October 12, 2024

Spaciousness on Retreat

Crestone Peak 14,266 ft. - All photos ©2024 Ronald Barnett I recently returned from at 10-day silent meditation retreat at the Blazing Mountain Retreat Center in Crestone Colorado. While my meditation practice, Centering Prayer, of almost 30 years is Christian in origin, the Retreat Center is owned and operated by Dharma Ocean a Tibeta...

October 11, 2024

When Disability Brings Advantage

Self 1954 At times my mother would say to me “sweetheart, everyone has a disability”. She actually used the word “handicap”. Her caring, motherly words were meant to be supportive and make me feel that I was normal, no different than other kids despite the fact that I developed polio in the pre-vaccine 1950s. This condition which affec...

September 29, 2024

Southwest Travelogue

Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve and Sangre de Cristo Mountains All photos © 2024 Ronald Barnett I recently returned from the American Southwest after a two-week pilgrimage of sorts to nature and cultural sites and a 10-day meditation retreat in Crestone CO. The high desert of Crestone is known for its “spiritual ambiance” tha...

September 8, 2024

A Lifetime of Adventures

Boulder Creek, Boulder CO, ©2024 Ronald Barnett What makes something an adventure? Does it require risks to life, limb, or personal security? Perhaps your idea of an adventure involves horseback riding through a remote, exotic landscape that breaks from the routine of everyday life. Or maybe it's trying something daring for the first t...

August 24, 2024

Golf, Shiva and the Kingdom of Heaven

It’s said when asked about the Kingdom of Heaven Jesus responded, “it’s spread upon the earth yet men do not see it”. This truth, hidden in plain sight, is also explored in unexpected places, like on the golf course. For example, in Michael Murphy’s “Golf in the Kingdom” the character Shiva Irons, a mystical, Scottish golf pro serves a...

July 28, 2024

A Buddhist Stupa Encounter

A Enlightenment Stupa KUNZANG PALYUL CHOLING River Rd, Poolesville MD As I sat with the Stupa at mid-day, open to whatever it might offer, a woman appeared and walked around it three times clockwise in silence. As the third time ended she bowed in its direction and started to leave. I asked, “are you free to talk”. She seemed to hesita...

July 17, 2024

Flying Again

Introduction. I recently returned from a round-trip flight Baltimore to Albuquerque to attend a training retreat. I had not flown in five years. The last time was in 1999 to Halifax, Nova Scotia via Toronto to receive photography training. Reasons Grounded. During those five years I’d not flown for different reasons including the onset...

June 3, 2024

The Love of Words: Obsession or Discipline?

How’s your vocabulary? How’s mine? I’ve been known to always look up a word I don’t know. Is this an obsession or a valuable discipline? What is the source of this drive to know? As a young boy it was unknowingly instilled by my mother. She once admirably spoke of a friend who had “a big vocabulary” (BV). I made a mental note that know...

May 27, 2024

A Visual Meditation on Hands

Human hands touch and affect the world. They serve many purposes including to inspire, to console, to love, to create, to heal, to help, to lead, and to follow others. Hands can even have spiritual significance. In Hinduism and Buddhism mudras are gestures using hands and fingers to express symbolic meanings. Here are visual examples w...

May 20, 2024

Embracing the Now: The Pin, the Egg and the Human - REVISED

“If I’d asked people what they wanted they would said a faster horse.” - Henry Ford As an early adopter of tech I couldn’t pass this one up. It’s an artificial intelligence (AI) based computer “The Pin” that is operated primarily by voice, is worn on the chest, and includes it’s “Egg”, an external battery charger. For years I’ve aimed ...

May 15, 2024

No Alternative Facts Here

It was August 1997 on the coast of Maine. A friend and I had signed up for a guided day of sea kayaking with two certified Maine guides at Maine Outfitters. It was our first exposure to the sport. On the van ride with others to the put-in, Burke, on the left above said: “Some of you may feel a little nervous about going out today. If s...

May 11, 2024

First Kiss, Best Kiss

This story, inspired by the phrase “first thought, best thought” - is attributed to both poet Allen Ginsberg and to Tibetan Buddhist meditation teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche explores the memorable magic of a first kiss. Thinking aside, do you recall your first episode of romantic kissing? Was it special? Or maybe just meh? Regardles...

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