Shores of Avalon

A simple poem sequence from a dream after falling asleep to a song by Tina Malia, called Shores of Avalon*. And then my response when awakening to a clearing sky after the rain. Finally a whisper of the Still Small Voice.

Today I am awed by the deep ocean of love within the misty song stream air of longing.

What is it, Who is it that you most desire? 

And where is home for you? 

 

Avalon

A moment to be still, beloved.

Just a moment and

you will be changed

into what you always are.

A breath now. 

The sea-song whispers

your true name.

Don't look back.

You are safe here.

You are home.

~~~

Is it raining upon your shores too?

Is the morning air soft and quiet?

Do silken songs stream seaward?

Is your sun lighting up the apple blossoms

from within the tree,

heart alight with such joy,

such joy.

~~~

Just a moment now, and

you will be home.

Love,
Rick

(c) Copyright Words and Image, Richard Sievers, July 2015

* The Song Shores of Avalon, is the creation of Tina Malia and is sung on Sound Cloud at Tina Malia: Shores of Avalon.

In the Midst of Life's Storms I Stand Serene

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, its indifference.

Elie Wiesel

 

When meditation is mastered, 

the mind is unwavering 

like the flame of a lamp in a windless place.

~~
That one is dear to me who runs 

not after the pleasant or 

away from the painful, 

grieves not, lusts not, 

but lets things 

come and go as they happen.

Two quotes by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita 

This is a blog entry containing more questions than answers. 

This is a blog entry about dharma, a word from Sanskrit that means something like: to uphold or sustain positive order in one's life. 

This is a blog entry about reacting to our society's seeming addiction to violence and aggression.

Last night I tossed around in worry about the aggressiveness and violence that pervades our world right now. I found myself increasingly angry about how ideas of retribution and vengeance and "righteous" war infiltrate everywhere in our country. I found myself spinning around solutions of stopping the disease of violence from entering our own home. 

I woke at 7 AM to the sound of rapid gun fire in the forest hollow next to us. Jolted for moments. I began to breathe in in and out and centering myself. I started thinking about Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. He was a leader who was forced into a war with his friends and relations. Arjuna was beset with sadness about the way things were going and how he would play a decisive role in slaying many people. It's an amazing story: In the midst of a great bloody battle all time was stopped and the warriors were frozen in mid action. The god Krishna came and spoke with Arjuna in a place beyond time's arrow, right in the middle of the battle field. Like Arjuna, I have been beset with wanting things to be different in our country and world. 

I know many others like me have had similar worries and cravings for the world to be different than it is. I am curious about the paths that the spiritually inclined take regarding the bane of aggressiveness and violence in our media and our politics.  Many simply turn off the news. Many simply associate with like-minded, peace seeking, kind people while shying away from all associations with the others. And many are like me, responding in reactive manner and thinking obsessively. What are the solutions to the hate that even infiltrates my family and neighborhood?

So, I step out of time for moments and meditate. I am akin to Arjuna for moments. The god relays questions to me that the combatants are too distracted to hear. Questions and affirmations of my need to be true and real to my own dharma fall into my mind. How can all this turmoil be different? How can peace possibly prevail on Earth, before it is too late? 

I am craving for it all to be different... like Arjuna!

Then I hear the gun shots ring out again, jolting me. And I say out loud "It is what it is."

A realization comes to me, then. I can lay down one of my weapons in my war with reality: the craving for it to be different. Then I can strengthen my will to accomplish my dharma. The ideas of either hiding from world's realities or railing against the injustices have distracted me from being fully alive here in this world, the way the Great mystery has made it. I need to change something inside of me. But what is that?

Do I stop pushing back against hate? No.

Do I retreat into the temple of denial? No.

Do I hate the hateful? No

Do I become another person in a particular tribe rejecting all the others? No.

Do I distract myself with analyzing and protecting my world? No.

So what is left to do?

A yoga affirmation connected with the eagle pose comes to me: 

"In the midst of life's storms I stand serene." 

If I stand in the middle of life I can no longer cut myself with my sworded need to change someone else's role in this life. I don't give up or hide or pursue righteousness or even grasp at the ideals of being better. Part of my dharma path is to live peace-fully. Perhaps this resonates with you too? Yet how can we live this way when beset with anger and judgement over the violent paths of others? By obsessing or denying violence I am filled with violence toward my own dharma.

What is the solution to not being ruled or numbed by another's need to destroy?  Being saddened and angry is only human after all. But the craving, the lust for the world to be different must change, or I will be eaten up inside. Yet, hiding my face from the real news heralded by the gun shots of my neighbor would just make me another indifferent bystander. 

This leaves many questions. All I know is that I have the will to stop in the middle of life's storms. I can meditate. I can seek refuges in my dharma of community and art. I can be of service just by being kind. And I consider Arjuna's quandary again. He did not change the actual outcome of the war with his cousins and brothers. But through Krishna's instruction he changed something inside himself. He did not resist or become a victim of his fate. He threaded through a middle path that comes through pausing the war.

Perhaps we can transmute this craving for the world to be different, not by pushing against or turning away but by stopping the battle within ourselves. The Gita suggests that we do this starting with discipline and meditation. And then allowing a solid center, not based on craving, to propel us to real action in the world. Being Real, not Reactive.

That's my musing for the day. The gun shots have ceased, along with my circular need to fix... at least for now. I need to understand more. I think that my craving for the world, my family and our country to be different needs to be translated into loving presence. Craving can be turned into simple longing, so I actually can stand more serene in the midst of battle. Sharing this time with you is a calm center for me. I hope it has been the same for you. Thank you for coming along with me and sharing this space between. 

I end with the full text of AA's serenity prayer and a link to an article in the Huffington Post re. surrender and right action based on this prayer. 

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
forever in the next.

 Link:

serenity-prayer-wisdom 

Love,
Rick 

(c) Copyright Words and Image, Richard Sievers, March 2015

HeART Residency

"Let the soul be hungry. Its hunger is the source of your Love."

                                                                                                                  Philip Shepherd from New Self New World, p. 419

I first wrote to you seven years ago at the beginning of the 2007 National Write a Novel in a Month experience in the blog: dreamingavalon.blogspot.com/2007   I remember putting my voice out there in the ethers, hoping it would arrive intact to your screen. How sweet and embarrassing it is to read those first lines of my coming out in this world. Since then I've learned a few things, like how important having a public face is to the creative life, even if in a modest way. Or the idea of treating one's creativity and spiritual practice with the respect and Humility they deserve.

This translated into showing up on the meditation cushion or the writing desk every day I could. This is Not to brag. Because I found that without my practice and showing up I would have been more incomplete in this world. I would have felt more senselessness around my problems instead of possibilities. I had to show up here at my desk or I'd continue to experience the little deaths that come from not touching my longing.

I remember saying that "If just one person accompanied me on this path, and I could be of comfort or admonition to that person, the whole effort would be worth it." Here we are, seven years later, still in love with spirit and creation. Thank you for being here.

Seven years later. It's another November. And I'm setting another intention in the creative life. I tell you about this intention for two reasons: One is that by stating publicly an intention the risk of Not following through becomes more treacherous than the risks when silent. The other reason is to accompany you or encourage you to hear your own longing.

• Is there an idea or a place or a person that brings tears to your eyes when you remember them? 
• Is there a longing that just does not seem to be satisfied in this world? 

For me it is of a place, on an island, where I felt safe and joyful. When I think of this place I
well up with longing. Is there such a thing of spirit for you?

I sit with this longing nearly every day, like I would with a friend who is sad and lonely and hopeful for the future. Recently I've had glimmerings from the Spirits when I asked how to soothe this open wound of missing a holy place and way of being. Here's what came to me in the journal as a reply to my query.:

Let the longing inform you that this...THIS... is real. Don't live like a ghost in the wind. You are here now. So Be Here, in your longing. Follow your tears home.

I was not so satisfied with this answer. So I asked for more concrete feedback about what to do with the longing:

Then paint it, write it. Vex the truth of ghosts with the real beat of your heart. 
Live this month of sadness as the artist that you are, the writer that you are, the friend that you are. Commit to Y/Our art and see the island made real in new and miraculous ways.
Call, Create and Correspond With your Longing.

OK, that was a specific answer for me. Here's another thing I've learned since 2007: When one receives a specific answer from reliable, compassionate, ascended aspects of this universe it definitely pays to follow through with humility and gratitude. Not out of a sense of guilt or destiny or even a promise of reward. Just listen and do what the loving part of your soul longs for. 

Here are my intentions for this November:

• To live here on the Art Farm as an artist in residence
• Show up for studio time 40 hours a week
• Focus on Painting and Writing
• Work on Completing long undone projects
• Enjoin in camaraderie with fellow creative friends
• Have a public showing of the art and writing at the end of the year
• Mostly, to experience what it's like to Work as an artist. This is something that I've wanted to know my whole life.

Thank you for reading this. I offer this commitment more out of trembling than surety. I also offer this as an invitation to join me, somehow, in following your own answers from spirit. 
I think that all manner of sadness, grief, vexation are just different forms of homesickness.

What are you homesick for? 
How can your longing inform you in your everyday life? 
How does your soul want to create something beautiful or loving from that place that you can't quite reach in this life?

Love,
Rick

(c) Copyright, Words and Image, Richard Sievers, November 2014

Being Seen

My Brittney Spaniel, Shannon, in our field in 1972

I had a beautiful dream last night. My faithful childhood dog sat in a field that is bright with silence and vibrant with clarity. I was with her. We were both childlike and yet old and wise. Every feeling and experience I'd had seemed to be distilled into one experience. 

This morning, the frost was shining like a heavy blanket of stars in our field and orchard. A subtle shimmering hovered over the bent grasses and limbs. Yet something else was out there too. In the dark wood, at the edge of our pasture, our neighbor's dog was moaning from his pen. 

Still, the dream lingered in my own eyes. I did not see my dog again in this reality. But I remembered her. And I felt her living inside my body,  just below my left shoulder.

I needed to come here to this desk and write to you. I felt the need to tell you that you are not alone. Whoever you are, whatever the circumstance that grabs at your attention, whatever grief you have, you are not alone. Those moments that seem to be gone or thwarted or unseen by others live right here in the body.

I've lived almost all my life feeling the pang of being unseen, unheard. It's a universal human experience to feel this way. Perhaps you feel this way. Though I don't know who you are I was thinking about you. I wanted to reflect to you something that David Whyte wrote in his poem Sweet Darkness:

"...The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.

The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you." *

For me feeling lonely has been a captivating story, a nearly constant barking from the edges of my view of my life. It's not true like I thought. It's an ancestral story which is also stored in my body. And it lives right beside the shimmering field in my chest. It's a dark and dank dead woodland with a lonely animal kept penned and hungry. 

Perhaps I cannot choose what memory or energy lives in my body. But I can still be free. I can choose compassion. I can choose to be present with whatever has been living there inside.

The dream last night is beyond a smallness that needs to make sense. My sweet little dog  taught me by example how to see with eyes that are light and open as the shimmering sky. 

I will not shun that lonely one in the dark woodland any more. And I will not forget the clarity and vibrancy of wonder either. I live between the two. Seeing them.

There, in the field is a gentle companion that loves you without prejudice or even history. She sees you as if for the first time. She is beyond making sense of all that has passed or figuring all that will come. There is a companion with eyes that see you and know you. Where does that one live in you?

RSS

Copyright of words (except quotation) and image Richard Sievers, January 2012

* Excerpt from David Whyte's book: River Flow, New and Selected Poems, published in 2007. p. 348