The Thirteenth Door

I wanted to tell you about a dream I had about freedom and life.

I was in a great school with my father, step mother and brother. The school was a magical building with rooms that expanded and contracted as if space and time were just concepts. This was a place we went in-between waking life in dreams. This was a place we went in-between the dreaming of being alive on this planet.

Many scenes are murky now. But I remember the highlights. We had a kindly stern instructor with a face like a rotating mirror. We were learning and laughing together, experimenting with art, skills of storytelling and even magic. The dream was ending. We all knew it was time to time to return to our waking lives.

Our teacher pointed to twelve doors. "You can go anywhere you want now." S/he said. the doors had labels on them, fantastic labels like "Byzantium" and "The Milky Way", and ordinary like "San Diego" and "Portland". My family members stepped toward the doors that called to each of them.

And I paused for a moment.

In that moment the teacher smiled at me. And within a kaleidoscope of mirrors of her face I saw a door I'd never seen before. I stepped through that door, the thirteenth door. This is a door that is always open, with an ocean breeze wafting through. On the other side was a small deck and a thin rail. On the other side of the rail was a great ocean. I felt the warm salt air lifting my hair. I smelled the warm briny tides. I heard the whoosh and moan of the sand being pushed in and out like a drawer. These feeling were visceral and as real as this breath, this connecting with you.

I looked over the rail. I knew I could go no further, unless I jumped into the sea. I also knew how free I really was, really am. I could stay right here on the edge of wonder. I could leap. I could turn and walk back into the room. I could re-inhabit any of the twelve other doors that I'd bypassed earlier. It did not really matter what I chose. I was free. FREE! And that's the reality that was as sweetly pungent and vibrant as the sea.

I just rested with that knowledge and then woke up here, now. 

~~~~

The reason I share this dream with you is partly a mystery to me. It's a personal dream, sure. But it may also be a dream that is universal. My experience with big dreams is that if I do not inhabit them in some way then their reality falters. Sometimes inhabiting a new reality means to share it and then see what returns from the offering.

My wisdom is often young and sometimes off key from the universal song. Like all of us in the Great school, we need each other's face of God to realize more of what our lives truly are. This dream told me that there is a bigger picture than what my everyday fears and efforts and possessions have been offering. That sense of freedom to choose any door, or to wait, or to decide to leap into another reality is heady with salt air. Real. Perhaps that sense can be shared and multiplied like the loaves and fishes.

Are you feeling trapped? Like there are only limited ways to move, if any? I have been feeling that way lately. Maybe there is another way through all of this? Maybe that way is in the mirror of a teacher's loving gaze? Perhaps there is door you've never witnessed before.  Perhaps the choices are more wild and open than you've ever imagined.

Love,
Rick

(c) Copyright (Text and Images) Richard Sievers, April 2014, All Rights Reserved.

Letter to My Daughter

A Sunflower for the Strong Women in My Life

This is an open letter to the regrets, rejections and longings that roam out in the world of the imagination. It is especially aimed at those regrets rising from decisions to turn away from someone you have loved... and later regretted.

For all of those that have ignored the hard and joyful paths that the heart has called from, to all those that have turned away from a love instead of claiming their inheritance as a human being, to all those that have listened more to their fears instead of their wonder, I write this letter. 

On a personal side I write this letter to someone I let go of, someone I turned away from so many years ago. Yet my heart never hardened in that fateful choice. I write to someone I miss and have never known. I hope this letter reaches you dear one of mine. This is the only way I have to get it to you.

I also hope that this inspires other readers to view and transmute their regrets before this precious time on Earth is done. Not just to wallow in the "what ifs" or to feel sad or to be self-critical. No! These modes of not dealing with regret serve no one very well. Talk to the missing and the rejected, even if only in your mind-heart. Just let the words flow. Perhaps there is wisdom within the sadness. Perhaps the regret can be transformed and become a flame in the heart, allowing you to live in service, humility and freedom.

My Letter:

Hello Daughter,

All these years. All the passing years without you. You are twenty-two years old now. Are you out there? Sweet woman-child, I wish I would have reached out and cared for you, took you in, been your father. Daughter of mine, are you gone forever? What sadness to never have known your smile, the curve of your fingers, the stars in your tears. Are there are so many tears between us?

Sometimes, in the dead of night, I hear a young woman’s voice whispering my name. Sometimes I see tracks in the snow outside my window that were not there before. Sometimes, when I am waking, the house tells me that you have just woken and are in the other room, with a beam of sun shining through your curtain. But then I get up and the house is empty.

In as many years as you have been here on Earth, I will be leaving or gone. Will I meet you in the other world? In this world, I wanted to tell you about my life: the life that courses in your veins too. I wanted to listen to your voice and to know you. But there is silence. Are you there?

How do I live my life to honor you, to rectify my inattention, to be a friend to someone sad or hungry? How do I be kind and real to everyone I meet? Who knows, I may pass you on the street. I may see hair and eyes like my grandmother’s. I may wonder and muse as you slip right on by.

I don’t have much wisdom to say. Most of the wisdom I’ve learned is hard won and drilled deep into the fiber of my bones. I “know” so little compared to the time when you first fell into this world.

All I can say is that most of the stuff you fear is not worth the energy of fearing. You will probably regret what you did not do more than what you did. Like I regretted not claiming you when I had the chance. In my ideals I feel that life is meant to be free in. Even if you are poor or lost or confused there is a place within you that is safe and joyful. You are Creator’s beautiful art, always. Don’t listen to the naysayers, the ones who have bought into hunkering down in their caves. And more than that, let go of the naysayers in your own head. I listened to those mumbling voices inside of me once, and lost you.

Daughter of mine, do you hear my voice, so far away, yet near?

Love,

Rick

Thanks for reading.
RS

(c) Copyright on Image and Words, Richard Sievers,  February 2014, All Rights Reserved.