level 3: temple

It's not so easy to enter the third level of the waterfall. One can reach it from the depths of the second level, by clambering rather messily up some grass, clinging to a water pipe. More elegantly, one can follow the little animal track, up the other side of the valley, then traverse in. This is the way I come.

And there's a difficult move, just before reaching the third level. There's a rather rounded sloping rock, that one has to pad gently across; and then make just one rock climbing move: a stretch down and across, to pick up a tiny toehold. And at this place there's a sense of exposure. If one were to fall, it could end in death. But rather than this being a problem or a disadvantage, this sort of risk is, for a man at least, a part of what it is to undertake a spiritual journey.

For me, it's important that we maintain an awareness of death, that we really face it as much as possible, whilst we are still alive. Otherwise, we can all too easily go through our life fearing death, avoiding even thinking about it; but also avoiding really living, through that fear. So this little rock climbing manoeuvre, to reach the third level, is, for me, very fitting. And if one successfully makes that move, then one is here in the third level, where few people come.

And at the beginning of the third level, there's a huge boulder, basically filling the valley, with a flat top; again, a beautiful place to sit and meditate, with a view down the valley. The chai shop is still visible from here. But it's really the last point that we have that sense of contact with manmade things.

I tend not to sit on this big rock, though. I like to go further – further up to a place where there's another beautiful boulder: the temple rock.

Often on one's spiritual journey, one goes through a difficult patch, but then comes out into the light. And life seems so beautiful, so simple, one really feels that one has arrived. And the third level of the waterfall is rather like this. Having made that difficult move to enter the third level, things become much easier. Here, the valley is not quite so steep, and it's rather open to the skies, very inviting, and delightful.

There are beautiful pools worthy of bathing in. And it's lovely just to hop about on the rocks. I've come up to my favourite rock, what I call my temple rock. In this series, I'm comparing the whole of the valley to one big temple, with ever deeper sanctuaries. But most days when I come here, this is as far as I get, because this rock just seems such a perfect place to be. It has a smooth flat top, perfect for lying down and sunbathing, or sitting and meditating. Next to it, there's a deep plunge pool. I've already stripped off naked and jumped in. It's a ritual for me – it's a baptism.

We tend to have lost a lot of these traditions in our modern functional life. And it's a shame. There's something about baptising oneself that is still very effective, at cleansing oneself, rejuvenating one. Just to plunge into some cool water, out in nature – it could be a pool in a mountain stream like this, it could be a lake, a river, the sea, it doesn't matter – but to submerge oneself, to go completely underwater, and then resurface: it is like being born again. I do it at every possible opportunity.

And now having cleansed myself in that way, I'm sitting on this temple rock, soaking up the natural beauty: the steep valley sides, still thickly wooded here. It's a miracle that the trees can cling to such steep slopes. And there's a lot of bare rock too. And looking up the valley, although the valley is not straight – it twists and turns – still, quite far off, I can see a steep sunlit patch of bare rock. It's raw mountain.

And, of course, there are cascades. There's a beautiful little waterfall right next to the rock that I'm sitting on, feeding that plunge pool. And just fifty metres or so away up the valley, there's the larger waterfall – in fact, a pair of waterfalls – that separate the third level from the fourth.

But for now, I feel so content, back here on this temple rock, where almost no one comes. There's such a beauty in this solitude; in being naked under the sun, without having to worry about what people might think; to feel the breeze on one's skin. These are the gifts that our natural world is giving us all the time. And usually we just reject the gifts. We clothe our bodies, so we don't feel the sun or the wind. We distract ourselves with the absurdities of modern life. So we barely notice the beauty of nature. But this place, this temple rock, never fails to bring me back to this space of simple connection with existence.

And if there is any downside to this beautiful experience, it's that it's so beautiful, there seems no need to go further. There's no incentive to see if there's yet more. And so it is, on our spiritual journey, when we have a breakthrough and reach a blissful state. We can all too easily think, well, this is it, this is all that life has to offer.

But it's not so. This journey, this journey goes on. And sometimes we have to venture further, even if it means stepping out of this bliss – in this case, the bliss of the temple rock.