Deep Peace at Crater Lake National Park
Crater Lake National Park is a place of serene majesty. It formed from a massive volcanic eruption 7,700 years ago and millennia of rain and snow filled the crater with pristine waters. The water is such a pure and still mirror that is difficult to tell where the sky ends and the water begins. There is no separation. What is above is also reflected below. Standing there, I couldn’t help but wonder how often we create separations that don’t truly exist. We search outside of ourselves for wisdom, peace, or even the divine, forgetting that perhaps what we see has been with us all along.
There is a palpable sense of standing in a place where the heavens and the Earth meet. The crater opens deep into the Earth at 1,943 feet (making it the deepest lake in the USA), while the tallest point on the rim is at a 1,978 foot elevation above the lake. It creates the remarkable feeling of being among the clouds but connected with the Earth’s deepest layers at the same time. To stand at Crater Lake is to stand in an ancient volcano in the sky. It feels like a grounding ascension. In my experience, we can’t truly ascend without being deeply grounded in our human experience at the same time. Perhaps Crater Lake reminds us that the deepest places within ourselves are not separate from our highest possibilities.
As I connected with the energy of Crater Lake, what emerged felt like a Deep Peace. There is an expansive quiet that is so loud one can’t help but feel peaceful there. Usually quiet is the absence of sound. That was not the case here. The quiet had a presence of its own that I have not felt anywhere else. It took my breath away.
The stillness moved through me like a wave despite the lack of any current in the waters below. The placid water is so still that it becomes a mirror, inviting reflection not only of the sky above, but also ourselves. In our busy lives, we rarely allow our inner waters to become still enough to see clearly. Sometimes the knowing that we need is already there, waiting beneath the surface until the mind is still enough to recognize it.
Crater Lake is more than a beautiful place. It is a place that invites stillness, reflection, and the quiet remembrance that beneath the illusion of separation, there is a deeper peace that has always connected us.
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