The Healing Curiosity of the Here and Now

Is Life a Train Track or a Living Spiral of Experience?

Sometimes I wonder:

What if this seemingly finite lifespan was the only eternity we have?

What if every moment was preserved and available to live again and again?

If we had the chance to relive our lives, would we focus on the outer circumstance or more and more on the inner experience of our perceptions and choices? 

If I lived my life over would I become more self-responsible for my experience? Would I become more skilled at transmuting my inner pain into something evolutionary or even something wonderful?  What about you, dear reader? Perhaps the questions can only be addressed with a Curiosity about what is really happening here and now?

What if This was it? 

What if we were each solely responsible for our own feelings and experience?

If this moment was forever, if I was owning and living my truth, I would shed my idea of being a victim. I'd be able to release the pain of someones verbal attack or forgetful nature. I'd be able to release the angst of regarding the consequences of seemingly fearsome and heavy circumstances. Maybe I'd even be more accepting of what appears to be real with my friends, family and society, without selling out as either a raging victim or a passive dreamer. Maybe I could transform my incredulous stare into a more loving and fruitful attention.

I might know that what I see in others is not so much the truth, but only my perception of truth.

I want to grow and become resilient and become my happiest self in loving prosperity. What about you? Isn't this a time to be curious about how to get what we really, really want beneath the drives, resentments and lusts of a reactive mind? Life can be hard and soft, bright and dreary, dreadful and dreamy only as much as we add particular labels to experience.

Rumi said something akin to "I'll meet you in a field beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing." What kind of field do we want to meet each other in? Is it a loving place? Or is it a reactive, sad, scared, mean place?

In the midst of these seemingly lonely and dangerous times where is your refuge?

If there were one action at this moment that could shift you into a state of safety and purpose, what would that be?

I come full circle with a sharing an outline of my experience right here as an example to learn from.

My Outer experience: 

Financial, health, family, vocational and security vexations all at once. And now writing to you.

Inner Experience:

Before Writing: Grasping for reasons and ways to fix my predicament.
After Writing (A daily practice): Curiosity, Compassion and even Connection with You.

What is your experience now?

What practice or distinct act could shift your inner gaze right now?

Is everything seemingly out there in the world reflecting your inner world or creating it?

If you are not going to change your experience then who?

Love,
Rick


(c) Copyright, Words and Image, Richard Sievers, January of 2017. All Rights Reserved.

Adding a Smile to Asana

Burrows Island, Anacortes, Washington 9/15

I've been considering happiness and the mindsets that create happiness. Looking out into the sphere of worldly news it's easy to crumble into the sad, fearful and dare I say empty cynical mindset. I wonder what course a spiritual seeker can chart to not be swamped in the tides that seem so turbulent?

I woke up this morning with the mind banging on his cage, saying listen to me, feed me, make me real. Mediation became my only refuge. The mat and the kneeling did Not take away the maniac locked inside my skull. And the yoga postures did not bring control over my mind. The chatter did, indeed continue. But what I realized again is that the I that observes all of this in meditation has something to say about what my experience will be.

I considered the dark thoughts I was watching as they groveled in the muddy banks of my thought stream. How could I have compassion on them while not buying into their dire predictions?

I could add a smile to my asana practice. Sounds funny, maybe even fake. A smile? Really? my kids are struggling. The world is crumbling. A smile?

But I tried it anyway. Do you know what happened? I felt a soft wave of happiness cruise through my aging bones. How about that! It was a moment, and I set a sail to catch  different wind than the bitter cold pulse from the icy mountains. I steered into a warmer wind... if only for a moment. And maybe that moment will reverberate through my entire day.

I wrote a poem about the experience. I hope you will try this when the sads and fears rise out of the thought stream.This is not a way to diminish any feeling or experience, even the cynical experience. But this may be a way to know there is a door out or through the darkness. 

Three Years from Now

Finding a momentary island

or

I don’t need to struggle to feel real.

I don’t want to wait

until the end to find sweet peace.

I want the honey now,

not only for me,

but to be so overflowing with freedom

that everyone around smiles and

just maybe imagines a life

happy and even beautiful.

Such a life only lives

right here and

right now.

Now,

not three years or

a hundred struggles

from now.

Now!

Try this:

just smile.

Make your face

wide with light.

Do this,

especially if you don’t

feel it.

The experience of Doing Happy

creates Being Happy…

and vice versa.

Now,

that’s freedom,

no matter the circumstance,

creating an island of refuge

right here, in the moment.

Love,

Rick

(c) Copyright, Words and Image, Richard Sievers, January 2016

How Do I Love Those That Hate?

The Hungry Ghost by RSS

I was feeling distressed this past day with voices rising up from our world which promote hatred and a form of individual rights which trample the rights and needs of others. The thoughts about radio personalities and the wavers of an outdated battle flag have spun around inside of me. How will our world ever evolve if it is always about Us and Them? Yet I was thinking in terms of us and them. 

Then I asked a deeper question while meditating this morning. And then some answers came from the One I only know as Mystery and Beloved. I wrote it all down in my journal. I thought maybe these musings would also provide some insight to someone else, like you. Perhaps this would be helpful in finding your own answers to:

How do I Love Those that Hate?

 

How do I love those that hate?

How do I remain true to the ethics of healing without hating or dismissing those that know they are right?  How do I remain true to the wonders you have revealed to me without demeaning the people so wrapped in maya (illusion and suffering) that they openly carry weapons to kill and words to maim?

How?

· By Grace and Gumption (will).

· Just be kind to them anyway.

· You do not have to fight anyone if you only say what you are For.

· When you revel in what you are against you join with the dark.

· Go into the fiery den of those that hate if you must and then come fully out.

· Stay Not in The Pain by carrying such a message around through your rejection, resistance. Resistance and rejection are the energies of connection with that which is disliked. A shadow.

· No doubt the revilers and cynics can harm the body and destroy the civility in society. But they cannot touch the spirit. Only You can consign your spirit to hell or heaven here and now.

· Either I am all, or I am some, or I am none. (You decide which level of wonder to believe)

· Yes is the word of your dharma (Life work/calling). Yes to what is right and just and loving all at the same time.

· These trials and conflicts (in this world) will remain as mystery while you dream this life.

· Soon you’ll know what is beyond your questions of Why.

· Soon you’ll realize who you always are.
Love,
Rick


(c) Copyright Words and Image, Richard Sievers, All Rights Reserved, August 2015

Mixed Metaphors

Returning after an estate sale at my parent's house this week:

When I think of all the stuff I saw disappear. Sold. Poof....years of collecting, thrown out into the world. All the beautiful things were like cotton on the dandelion, yet not so fertile. The things were inert, like dust. The memories and hopes still hovered around them though. It was like their life was a blast of material fun.

This world, being an entertainment of the senses. Then the movie ends. The parents edge toward the paths of the other world. And I imagine my last days too. Can it be that those will really come for me? For you? What will the end be like? And how am I present now?

This life appears as so many metaphors all mixed together: Seed, dust, vision, path.
How poignant and fleeting, how seemingly pointless and truly fantastic this experience is.
Is there an answer to all the question the things ask as the once upon a time treasures fly out the door under the arm of a new customer?

At this stage of my life I'm not so ashamed of sounding trite or corny. So I repeat the only answer I hear rising out of my parent's empty house. Things disintegrate into loss. Yet there is nothing to lose with the one thing that is not a thing at all: LOVE.

Love is the answer to all the pondering. Not the metaphor of love, but the ordinary, nitty-gritty, terrorizing, infusing wonder that is love. Love of life. Love of the people. Love of the Earth. Love of the dust and the seed. Love of the vision of what is. Love for the path that disappears into a field of stars.


Love,
Rick

(c) Copyright Image and Words, Richard Sievers,  July 2014, All Rights Reserved

Reflections in the Hall of Light

Sun in Unseen Wavelengths on the Computer Screen

Today I'm finishing the greenhouse project on our little farm. This is also the eve of leaving for a sojourn to reconnect with far flung friends and family. This morning I was caught by surprise by the memory of my father. I remember how a father's heart and eyes can reside in a child...even when that child is an adult.


I looked into the black screen and saw my father with sad wise eyes reflecting back. Is that who I am? An improvement by stealth and fire? What do I carry from him? What is truly my own?

Dad, 
I'm coming home. Right now you are probably sitting on your bluff above the wave wracked cove, so far away. Will you meet me there, one last time? Will you meet the eyes that cried the tears that you could not? Will you look at me with the look of a far away war that was never won?

Your eyes are like the sun to me, dad. Look at me one more time.

I remember you dad, how we built so many houses together. The day you left. The day I heard an echo of you, right here in the structure I built with my own two hands.

 ~~~~

The morning is calm. If the weather holds, I will arc the plastic roof over the greenhouse frame. I will make a translucent story board of heaven. The view that is nearly clear, but not quite. House of the sun. A shelter from the storms, yet gossamer thin. My hall to worship streaming light that came from millions of miles away.


Thanks for reading.
May you see and embrace the reflection in the dark mirror.
My you lift your eyes to that insubstantial boundary between here and heaven.
May you feel the warmth of the sun on this crisp autumn day.

Rick

Copyright (c) Richard Sievers, October 2013, All Rights Reserved.

God Does Not Kill!

Julia Sievers ca. 1870s

To the religious ideologues who insist they know what is right and wrong, to those who kill in the name of all that is sacred and true and to those who wonder why hatred appears to bloom in our world, a letter from my Great Great Grandmother written in her journal 1898.

"God does not kill! Neither by flashing lightning, the whirling wind, the roaring water.... God does not kill with poison, pestilence, plague, famine, or flame. God does not kill with disease or disorder, with heartache or headache... God does not kill anyone, anywhere, or at anytime!

The doctrine that God takes away a child to punish or afflict a parent; takes away a husband to humble the wife... that God comes into a family like a lesson of destruction, to kill afflict and sadden; that God bankrupts or burdens any one good or bad; the doctrine of providential affliction and distress and sorrow; This is (an) unloving, godless and pitiless doctrine, (it) has no place in the thought of today only because it has had the sanction of the hoary ages Not because it is true, or reasonable, or good, or acceptable, or helpful, or hopeful.

Julia Sievers ca. 1940

(It is) Not because the Bible, or philosophy, or history, or science would have us believe it. But simply because we have been taught it, and have not had the courage to deny it.

God pities and helps, and guides and leads, and teaches, and hopes for us, but does Not destroy us, or hurt us, or hinder us. The theologian may have to teach us apostate thought to harmonize us with his system of so-called truth, But We Know Better; and in all justice and fairness let us quit accusing providence of inspiring crime and promoting disease, and in encouraging death....1

"Think and speak love, joy, peace, truth, Mercy. The Good is here and it is ours, it is for  you and me and to you and me.

In exalting the faculty of the Soul, we annihilate in a great degree the delusion of the senses." 2

Written by Julia M Sievers, Dennison, Iowa 1898


I love you Great Great Grandmother. May your prayers of love and clear thinking bloom in our world.

Rick

Notes:

1. Julia's hand written journal is full of quotes and prayers and thoughts, all in devotion to God as she understood him. I was only the second person to ever read this passage until today. She notes that she adapted this first section based on an editorial from the Fort Worth, (Tex) Register.

2. This last four lines has the name "Martin" inscribed underneath it.


Copyright Richard Sievers, March 2013, All Rights Reserved

Urgent

Early Autumn Morning on Redfish Lake, Idaho

What if this one journal entry was the only writing left of mine at the end of my life? 

What if this was the very last thing you ever read? 

I'm reminded of a poem by Wendell Berry:

The Wish To Be Generous

All that I serve will die, all my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man's evil, or dwindle
in its own age. Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light taken from me into the seed
of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass.*

All that I serve in this world will die sooner or later. What essence of me will last through my brief flash on earth... Earth, Holy Earth, cradle of me and trillions of beings like me? What a luminous cradle this place is! An amazing refuge for small little lives that that will be something more and yet nothing at all.

Did I love well in service and self evolution?

Was I present and willing to be here?

Did I primarily give or take from the earth and my fellow beings?

Each moment is the last moment of your history. Soon enough the moment will be the last of your particular life. The endeavor to love truly, simply and wholly is urgent... URGENT. This is not a practice run. We have such a finite span of moments to be together in this form, in this shining wounded wonder of places.

I remember Ram Das saying something like this: The meaning of life is to really experience life (paraphrase). 

What do you need to experience today, in this moment, in this life? 

What/who will you release to make room for the yearnings of your soul? 

What dangerous and loving words must you utter to step into joy in your life?

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Copyright Richard Sievers 2011

* Poem The Wish To Be Generous was quoted from Wendell Berry's book The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, page 70, published in 1998 by Counterpoint, Washington, D.C.