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"The Locomotive" by Christopher Cranch

The roaring monster, blazing through the land

Athwart the night, with crest of smoke and flame;

Like those weird bulls Medea learned to tame

By sorcery, yoked to plough the Colchian strand

In forced obedience under Jason's hand.

Yet modern skill outstripped this antique fame,

When o'er our plains and through the rocky bar

Of hills it pushed its ever-lengthening line

Of iron roads, with gain far more divine

Than when the daring Argonauts from far

Came for the golden fleece, which like a star

Hung clouded in the dragon-guarded shrine.

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Complete text of the poem by Christopher Cranch.

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April 4th, 2018; 6:38 am. This picture was taken a few minutes after the suns light lit up the horizon on Destin Floridas beach. I watched everything wake up, while even myself was awakening. The little critters that wake up and come out, the birds that start flying around and then when the people awake and start there journey to the beach. When taking this picture I was in a pure state of calmness and completely in tune with the Earth.

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I took this image while snowboarding in Breckinridge, Colorado. While I was up on the airlift, you move slow and have time to take in the beauty of nature while being relaxed. This picture shows true beauty, the sky is a crystal blue with wispy clouds and the snow is so clean perfect while resting on green branches and the frozen ground. The air there is so crisp and clean it almost hurts your throat. While here a person reaches true tranquility.

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"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience." by Ralph Emerson

This quote is just 9 words with a huge meaning behind it. He's telling the reader to live like nature, she's patient and peaceful. The way nature lives life is the way humanity should live as well

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"If a man does not keep with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away." by Henry Thoreau

Thoreau explains that if someone has different views then let them live through those and being yourself is the best way to live life.

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"Live in the sunshine, Swim the sea,
Drink the wild air" by Ralph Emerson

This quote is the exact definition of how transcendentalist live and want others to live. Take advantage of everything the world has to offer while you can. If the sun is out, be outside, go for a hike, run or walk. If there is a lake or ocean swim in it and feel connected to the life that is all around you underwater. Breathe in the precious clean air that you have and breathe it in like you drink water. Just live your life.

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This video is very moving and talks about a group of girls who were very close. Then as they got older some of them ran into obstacles and some were lost but how the rest of them stuck together and looked at the bright side of every loss. The group of women kept their heads high and walked through life together and became stronger and stronger. They lived life to the fullest because they knew not everything was forever so why waste any time feeling sad. This group of women were transcending further and further everytime something had happened to them and when the time came they rested happily and feeling full.

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Transcending: Words on Women and Strength

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"Transcending the Self" by Emma Stone, Ph.D.

This article talks about a human emotions and how they connect to everything such as, your family, your friends or your environment. Stone says that how in tune a person is with their emotion can change a lot. If a person is to let their senses roam free when in an environment, the things they learn and see are very different than if someone is just walking past things. This article talks about the importance of and how to transcend and live your life like Thoreau did.

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Generally, emotions are about the self. They offer us a powerful and immediate assessment of our current state, objectives and wellbeing, and in so doing, guide our subsequent behaviour and future decisions. In a time where the self reigns supreme (think selfie, self-belief, self-confidence, self esteem, self-truth, and the most dominant, ), positive, uplifting feelings like happiness that help us to feel good about ourselves are championed in mainstream Western culture and social media.

It is incontestable that the pursuit of happiness, and the search for the good life (also known as eudaimonia) is noble and meaningful. It is healthy to seek joy, celebrate personal wellbeing and look for fulfilment in the flux of everyday life.

However, what if we began to actively seek out and celebrate emotional experiences that move beyond a fixation with self to reinforce our connectedness to other human beings, and the wider planet? What if there were certain emotions that gave us a distinctive and deeper flavour of self-love, because they encouraged us to feel unity with others and wonder for the greater cosmos? Self-love could then, perhaps be reconciled with love for humanity, and love for the earth: an altogether more holistic experience of love.

We need to nourish our emotional landscapes with a broader spectrum of emotions that shift us beyond the self, into a state of interconnectedness. Notably, awe has been identified as one of the rare emotional states (along with gratitude, compassion, elevation and inspiration) which transcends the self.

In the coming years, as we face far-reaching, inevitable environmental and humanitarian challenges, self-transcendence will be more significant and necessary than ever before. Emotions, long seen by some as irrational or inconsequential, actually lead to tangible outcomes in the sense they propel our decisions and subsequent actions. Harnessing the transformational potential of awe and other self-transcending emotions could radically change how we interact with each other and the world around us.
How awe transcends the self
Awe is one of the very rare emotions that turn our minds outwards, rather than inwards. On experiencing awe, we are encouraged to transcend the boundaries of the individual self. Our attention is drawn outside ourselves to wonder at phenomena in the natural world, the noble actions of others, or the genius of creativity. We are thus invited to re-assess our daily concerns and ingrained expectations of life.

Here are some of the compelling ways in which awe provokes self-transcendence:

Increased awareness of the present moment

A study conducted in 2012 discovered that awe-inducing experiences exert an influence on our perceptions of time. Participants who experienced awe in a laboratory setting perceived time as "slowed down", expansive and plentiful, with an enhanced awareness of the present moment. Their changed perceptions of time were in fact similar to the effects felt by individuals who regularly practise mindfulness.

This altered understanding of the nature of time carries diverse pro-social outcomes, leading to a preference for experiences over material or consumer goods, increased life satisfaction, and an increased willingness to volunteer time.

Increased willingness to volunteer time

Following the above experience of awe in a laboratory, participants in the study also demonstrated an increased propensity to volunteer their time to help others. Participants were noted to be more patient after experiencing awe, highly relevant in a time-poor society where contributing time to help others or undertake charity work is often difficult.

Research conducted by Piff et al. tested the hypothesis that awe leads to pro-social behaviour by diminishing the importance of the individual self. The researchers carried out tests in a laboratory setting where experiences of awe predicted greater generosity in a game than the experience of other emotions such as compassion. The more awe experienced by the participant, the more generous their behaviour.

Piff et al. also conducted follow-up experiments that proved that the experience of awe not only results in increased generosity, but in more ethical decision-making. Participants were presented with different hypothetical scenarios, each describing a different self-interested act, such as being given $20 in change rather than $10 after purchasing a coffee and muffin. Those who had experienced awe were noted as more likely to behave ethically.

This outcome can be explained by simultaneous feelings of being a "small self" that is also part of something greater and more significant. Piff reflected, " Might awe cause people to become more invested in the greater good, giving more to charity, volunteering to help others, or doing more to lessen their impact on the environment?"

A sense of being enfolded into collectivity

Further research shows that another consequence of the "diminished sense of self' borne of awe is an enhanced awareness of being part of something infinitely larger and more universal. Shiota et al. report that compared to those asked to re-live a moment where they felt personal pride, those asked to live an awe-inspiring moment shared significantly more pronounced feelings of love, connectedness to the world around them, rapture, contentment, awareness of something greater than the self, a lack of awareness of everyday concerns, and a desire to prolong the emotional state for as long as possible.

Awe affects perceptions of self: for example, those who have experienced awe are more prone to describe themselves in universal terms rather than specific terms: I am a living being, or I am a human. It also impacts on feelings of "oneness" with others, and with reality in general: one study discovered that exposure to awe-inspiring videos on nature and childbirth resulted in an increase in spirituality, and an enhanced tendency to see oneself as part of a larger transcendent reality.

Awe thus provokes cognitive and behavioral shifts towards greater collaboration and co-operation, which encourage the integration of individuals into collective folds.
Ways to experience more awe
Ultimately, awe can help render us more aware that we are part of a vast and meaningful reality. The pro-social, and pro-planetary benefits of awe are undeniable. So how do we get more of this emotion in our everyday lives?

Helpfully, awe is present not only in breathtaking natural landscapes or works of art, but also in the minutiae of everyday life. We simply need to open ourselves up more to it. Consider:

Stargazing

Taking in a view from somewhere elevated

Disengaging from your device and allowing yourself to be present as you move through your day: notice seasonal changes, cloud patterns, the sound of laughter, intoxicating smells

Getting amongst nature in some form every day-the natural world is one of the richest sources of awe available

Spending time with children-their sense of wonder towards the world around them is infectious

Visiting places that are repositories of awe: museums, art galleries, zoos, historical sites, places of worship, concert halls

Waking up early, watch the sun rise

Listening to awe-inspiring music: Bach, Rachmaninov, Beethoven

Using media to engage with awe: for example, documentaries with incredible footage of the natural world, space, or the achievements of other human beings.

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Generally, emotions are about the self. They offer us a powerful and immediate assessment of our current state, objectives and wellbeing, and in so doing, guide our subsequent behaviour and future decisions.

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This podcast goes into depth about what Thoreau enthusiasts are trying to carry on. They believe in Thoreau's views strongly and keep his name and transcendentalism living through generations while adding onto it as well. In this podcast one man talks about how fishing is one of the highest transcendentalism act you can do. You are with nature, complete silence other than the water and you are interacting with the life that is below the surface. Everything in this podcast is truly beautiful and eye opening to any person who listens to it while giving information about Thoreau and his book "Walden".

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Walden & the Natural World of Transcendentalism

Henry David Thoreau, our specimen of American genius in nature, wrote famously short, and long. "Simplify," in a one-word sentence of good advice. But then 2- words on 7-thousand pages in his quotable lifetime journal.

It's one of many odd points to notice about Thoreau at his 200 th birthday: that the non-stop writer was equally a man of action, a scientist and a high-flying poet whose imagination saw that "the bluebird carries the sky on his back;" and still a workman with callused hands, at home in the wild, a walker four hours a day on average, in no particular direction. His transcendentalism was all about the blossoming intersection of nature-study introspection, fact idea, detail ideals. In his pine grove, on his river, at his pond, the Thoreau.

N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945) Walden Pond Revisited, 1942

What does a Transcendentalist do, we were asking in the first of three bicentennial Thoreau shows? All the answers are to be found in the canoe trip that became a masterpiece, titled: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. What the Transcendentalist does is soar - between water below and sky above; between this day and eternity, between Nature, and human society.

We start our journey at the South Bridge Boat House near Thoreau's house on Main Street in Concord, just upstream from the Concord River itself. A naturalist philosopher in the Thoreau lineage, Alex Strong from Maine, is one of our guides. During our trip down Thoreau's "little Nile", Alex tells us about what the strapping, young 22 year old was learning on his voyage:

He was learning about big-N Nature when he was studying the Perch, studying when flowers bloomed, where the bees were. The notes he took, the meticulous notes, weren't just about the little details; they're about understanding the whole picture and keeping nature sacred while understanding it, in all its finite mundane details.

Next up, the still-water Walden, a pond in Concord, Massachusetts where Henry Thoreau wrote his great book in a cabin by the shore. In 1845 Walden was a woodlot next to the new railway where the 28-year-old poet went to "suck out the marrow of life," whatever it turned out to be. Our guide to the pond and the book, the young philosopher John Kaag had been in and out of the Walden water the other morning before we got there.

Photo by Michael J. Lutch
While we're here, at Walden, we decided to stop and consider the statuesque, very tall, dark-green, almost black, pine trees all around Walden Pond, trees that Thoreau came to consider cousins, virtually human. Richard Higgins, widely traveled in Concord today, has written a book on Thoreau and the Language of Trees, and he has no doubt that Thoreau spoke it fluently, from the heart.

Finally, we conclude with a Thoreauvian meditation on walking. Real walkers are born, not made, Thoreau liked to say. "If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again, - if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man, then you are ready for a walk." These days the woods and the bookstores are full of such walkers. e literary traveler Andrew Forsthoefel made his reputation in public radio walking 4000 miles from Philadelphia to San Francisco, with a sign that said "walking to listen" and recording back-road stories. And then there's th Paul Theroux, of Cape Cod and Hawaii, of the Mosquito Coast and The Great Railway Bazaar. He has spent a lifetime on trains, and in kayaks, and a lot of it on his own two feet in China, in our own Deep South and specially in Africa. In our conversation, Theroux extends Thoreau's idea that walking is in-born, into some more than others.
See a full transcript of this show on

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Walden & the Natural World of Transcendentalism

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Henry David Thoreau, our specimen of American genius in nature, wrote famously short, and long. "Simplify," in a one-word sentence of good advice. But then 2- words on 7-thousand pages in his quotable lifetime journal.

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Art by Sol Purpose

The artwork that is shown has so many details that just about anyone may overlook and to see everything in this painting and analyze it would take time. This painting is exactly like Thoreau's views because someone who see this art might think thats its a pretty painting and not read into the meaning behind it just like people do with living their lives. Everything in this image is what life gives you and when looking at this image the viewer might feel happy because it shows just how beautiful Earth truly is.

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"English Companion" by Shaunna Russell

Russell is a well known artist for capturing more than just a yellow, brown or black lab. She can look at an animal and see much more than just the color that it is. Her art really brings out the soul of the dog and brings the painting to life and catches the eye. Her paintings are a great example of how Thoreau saw the world, he would look at something so ordinary and see so much beauty in it. As well as Russell who can look at any ordinary pet, animal, and see the true inner beauty of it all and open the eyes of the viewer.

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"I Believe I Can Fly" by R. Kelly

"I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
I think about it every night and day
Spread my wings and fly away"

R. Kelly has an epiphany of some sort and decides to write about it. He repeats the phrase "I Believe" because he realized that if he believes and hopes then his life will be optimistic and things will be in his favor. He talks about how he thought the world was just and awful song, but then he stops thinking negatively and lets everything the earth gives us, into his heart. This song opened up his mind that things so little make the biggest differences, change your views and he just takes it all in.

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"Get Up, Stand Up" by Bob Marley

"Preacher man, don't tell me, Heaven is under the earth
I know you don't know, what life is really worth
It's not all that glitters is gold, half the story has never been told
So now you see the light, stand up for your rights"

Bob Marley wrote this song because he himself had trouble with transcending at first but once he did he tried helping others through his music. He talks about how life is not about "glitter" and "gold" like everyone makes it out to be. How "half of the story has never been told" and that people must start to look deeper in what they do. Thoreau wrote poetry about this too, that people overlooks all that life has to offer.

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"What a Transcendent Experience Really Means" by Emily Esfahani Smith

This article talks about a woman who was diagnosed with cancer and did not have much time to live her life. She realizes that she hasn't had her eyes truly open for her whole life and makes it her goal to transcend. She says that "Transcendence is a fundamental part of human life" and Thoreau would strongly agree. This article goes along with all transcendentalists ideas of truly living with your eyes wide open and using all your senses to the fullest. To finally, truly transcend.

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Several years ago, I met a woman named Janeen Delaney who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Janeen, who grew up in a Christian household, had drifted away from religion over the years; when she received her diagnosis in 2005, the absence of a spiritual system in her life suddenly seemed like a big existential hole. She suddenly felt like she was living in a "wasteland." Without a belief in something bigger or an afterlife, death meant annihilation, the absolute end - and that frightened her.
Knowing she was going to die, she said, made her question what meaning her life had.

Then, one day in 2008, she learned about a study at Johns Hopkins University looking at people facing imminent death. The research team, led by psychiatrist Roland Griffiths, wanted to know whether having a major transcendent experience - induced by psilocybin, the active ingredient in so-called magic mushrooms - would help people like Janeen face death with peace rather than despair. So they brought terminal cancer patients into the lab, administered psilocybin to them in a private, controlled setting, and then later assessed how having a mystical experience affected their attitude toward dying. Janeen signed up.

This study is part of a growing body of work on what psychologists call "self-transcendent experiences." A new paper in the Review of General Psychology, "The Varieties of Self-Transcendent Experience," defines these states as transient moments when people feel lifted above the hustle and bustle of daily life, their sense of self fades away, and they feel connected to something bigger. In such states, people typically report feelings of awe and rapture; of time stopping; and of feeling a sense of unity with other people, nature, God, or the universe.

That was Janeen's experience on psilocybin: "There was not one atom of myself," she said, "that did not merge with the divine."

* * *

Transcendence is a fundamental part of the human experience. Since the dawn of our species, people have been losing themselves in ritualistic prayer, song, and dance. Even so, for a long time, the prevailing consensus in psychology was that such experiences were pathological rather than natural. Freud believed that "oceanic feelings of oneness" were neurotic memories of the womb and the signs of a deranged mind.

But according David Yaden, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania and the lead author of the self-transcendence paper, the current research paints a very different picture. Along with his co-authors, Yaden has found that self-transcendent experiences can in fact have a profoundly positive effect on the human psyche.

"A consensus has emerged from the contemporary research data," Yaden told me, "that Freud was wrong."

The person who got transcendence right, Yaden says, is William James, the great American psychologist of the 19th century who wrote Varieties of Religious Experience. James was fascinated by transcendent states - so fascinated he took nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, to "stimulate the mystical consciousness" in himself. Though a meticulous scientist, James admitted to experiencing "the strongest emotion" he'd ever felt under the influence of the drug. Based on that experience, he concluded that during transcendent states, we slip into an altered state of consciousness different from our ordinary waking or rational consciousness. "No account of the universe in its totality," he wrote, "can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded."

Mind-altering substances are one path to transcendence, but they're not the only one. You can lose yourself in love, or feel awe watching a lightning storm from your porch. You can get into a state of flow at work, or take a break from the rush of everyday life by meditating. And these experiences exist on a spectrum, as Yaden points out: There are "major transcendent experiences," where your sense of self completely dissolves and you feel at one with the universe - which is what Janeen experienced. And then there are more everyday experiences, like when you step outside of your head while listening to a beautiful piece of music, taking a walk through the woods, or attending a religious service. According to Yaden, most people have had some sort of transcendent experience at some point in their lives - and about a third of the population has had "intense experiences of unity."

And these experiences can change you in lasting ways. In one study from 2014, students looked up at a towering grove of 200-feet-tall eucalyptus trees for just one minute - but after that awe-inspiring encounter with nature, they reported felt less self-centered, and they even behaved more generously when given the chance to help someone. Other research shows that after transcendent experiences, people feel more satisfied with their lives and rate their lives as more meaningful. They also have higher levels of oxytocin - the hormone that promotes bonding between two people -coursing through their blood.

Yaden himself has had some firsthand experience with these states. His own brush with transcendence, he says, happened one day in college, as he was lying on his dorm-room bed. It was spontaneous - he wasn't high, or drinking, or meditating. But suddenly, he recalls, he "felt a deep sense of unity," and "afterward, I felt more open to other people and more engaged in my life." His curiosity about the experience followed him to graduate school, where he focused his studies on the psychology and neuroscience of transcendence.

His research has led him to believe that the magic of transcendence lies in its "annihilational" aspect, or the way it induces a feeling of self-loss. Neuroscience research shows that during transcendent states, there is decreased activity in the posterior superior parietal lobe, the area of the brain that locates the self in space and distinguishes it from everything else. When the neuronal inputs to this part of the brain decrease, the brain can no longer separate the self from the surrounding environment - which is why people feel their sense of self diminish, while also feeling connected to everyone and everything around them.

It's also why transcendent experiences often lead people to feel better about their lives. So many of us spend so much time ruminating and worrying about problems large and small: What's going to happen if I lose my job? What if he dumps me? I'm worthless. Nothing I do matters. How come she brushed me off? One day I'm going to die ... In most cases, a transcendent experience washes these destructive thoughts out of our minds. "When the self temporarily disappears," Yaden and his colleagues write, "so too may some of these fears and anxieties."

Transcendent experiences, in other words, bring perspective, helping us to abandon the conceit that we are at the center of the world. "We can experience union with something larger than ourselves," as William James put it, "and in that union find our greatest peace."

That's exactly what happened with Janeen. After she took the psilocybin capsule, she relaxed onto a sofa in a cozy room in the lab and listened to a soundtrack designed by the researchers. The session lasted eight hours; the most dramatic moment, she recalls, came during Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings." She was focused on how beautiful the music was when she noticed that the pace of her breathing was following the melody. As the music came to its climax, and the notes reached higher and higher, Janeen suddenly held her breath.

"And then the song was over and, in that moment," she says, "I realized it was okay not to breathe anymore. It was a strange revelation. Being aware that it was okay to stop breathing - that was huge for me." Like many of the other cancer patients in this study, Janeen's fear of death melted away. "I just had to remind myself of what I said: That when you get to the end, it's okay not to breathe."

But why? What had happened to lead her to this realization? Only Janeen knows the full details of her mystical state. The rest of us know only that the experience left her reassured about her place in the universe, whether she was alive or dead. It brought her peace. And that was why, when the time came, it was okay for her to stop breathing. Janeen passed away in 2015.
Emily Esfahani Smith is a writer and author in Washington, D.C. The story of Janeen Delaney appears in Smith's book The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life that Matters.

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What a 'Transcendent Experience' Really Means

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Several years ago, I met a woman named Janeen Delaney who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Janeen, who grew up in a Christian household, had drifted away from religion over the years; when she received her diagnosis in 2005, the absence of a spiritual system in her life suddenly seemed like a big existential hole.

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"The world is but a canvas to our own imagination." by Henry David Thoreau

This certain quote from Thoreau tells anyone who reads it that your imagination comes from what you know and can see. If your imagination has bright colors that may be because of the changing colors in the sky during a sunset. If you imagine coolness, that may be due to winter or cool water. This quote may also be about mankind trying to become more modern, with testing different ways of this and using what the world gives us. Thoreau honestly and truly believes that that this world is absolutely magnificent and intricate.

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"View of Pike's Peak" by George Caleb Bingham

Bingham paints this in Colorado because he wanted others to see the detail that he could see and put on a canvas. Thoreau wanted others to understand what he could see and not get caught up in trying to modernize the world and take what we are given. This was painted by Bingham's naked eye to show that there is so much to see other than a few trees and mountains, as did Thoreau. Bingham was a very early transcendentalist.

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"Earth Song" by Michael Jackson

"Did you ever stop to notice
All the blood we've shed before
Did you ever stop to notice
This crying Earth, these weeping shores"

"Earth Song" was Michael Jacksons first song about the environment and in this song he talks about how many people overlook and take advantage of the Earth we live on. In the lines above he asks if us, humanity, ever stops to notice things such as, trash in the ocean. This song deeply compares to Throeau's transcendentalist views about Earth and that if humanity were to "stop and notice" the details of Earth and take the "marrow" out of what we are given everyone would transcend.