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.

I Am Woven Into the Fabric of the Universe

A message I received while in circle with my shamanic friends this weekend. This was meant for me and my periodic embarrassment of being inspirited with gifts and love. Like many, I am often afraid to be different. I am often afraid to state the truth within me which is not yet quantifiable. This may help someone else out there too...I hope so.

"What happens when you don't channel the spiritual power that is yours to give with love? Others may fail or pull up the slack. No longer apologize, minimize or trivialize our holy humble purposes in your life. What right have you to deny what is wondrous and loving within you? There are consequences for you resisting alignment with Love (Love=The Beloved and Compassionate Ones). The ancestors, animals, the Earth itself may suffer."

"The World of Love is diminished when you diminish what is Most Lovely in yourself."

An inspiration for this post was a song:
Heart of the Universe
by Peter Kater and Snatum Kaur
Love,
Rick

Copyright Rick Sievers, June 2013, All Rights Reserved

Days 9-10 You Say...I Say

If you receive a version of this blog sent by email press the title link to see the blog in its full format. This posting is a segment of my ongoing series Two Weeks in an American Ashram begun in November 2012. To see the previous entries just scroll down or click on Journal Archive at the right. 

Heard in Prayer:

Child of mine:

You say that you have not done enough to match my grace.

My Grace is sufficient; that's why it's called grace.

You say that you have mostly failed in your callings.

I say that by Grace you serve 

and by Grace you offer what you will.

You say that your mind wanders too much, 

that you are too much a hermit and too little a friend.

I say that my Grace fills the space between your words.

I say that you are beloved on earth.

I say you are wholly mine.

I say you are a strand 

in the very fabric of my purpose 

here in this world of now.

Peace,
Rick

(c) Copyright Richard Sievers, February 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.