Re-Membering

When I was seven I taught myself to consciously record my experiences within the cells of my body. I remember one time vividly. I was sitting at the dining room table with my whole family, all eight of us. I sat opposite of an old glass window. It had one of those panes that appears to be flowing over itself, like water. Solid glass which was ripply like a frozen river. I sat in my chair and put my fork down. Then I  pretended I was a camera and a cat at the same time. (Kids can easily be several things at once.) I let the image of the scene outside the window seep into my brain and then filter down into my whole body. When the image was in me I would close my eyes slowly like a camera shutter. And I'd blink with the pace and ease of a cat with lovey dovey eyes. Slow and easy.

I remember my step father catching me in my experiment of integrating the outer with the inner. He gave me one of those befuddled stares. Everyone was talking, and I was just sitting there slowly opening and closing my eyes. "What the hell are you doing?" he said to me. But I was dreamy. I just stayed quiet. How can a seven year old explain such advanced stuff to a mere adult?

Little did I know, that not only the image was steeped into me, but also all the other senses came alive inside too. The body-mind is such an exquisite instrument for memory and Re-Membering. What I saw became a part of me consciously. Unlike the trauma I'd stored in my body out of fear, I'd moved this experience in with intention and care. I just wanted the experience of being that tree and little house just outside our window. Then I became the whole scene. Just by being a cat and a camera. Just by being a kid in love with the sultry light of a Southern California evening. It's all still alive.

Try being a kid like this in your own space. I guarantee it works just a well as an adult. And it brings a smile up from the core of all the chakras. Be a cat slowly blinking and a camera of the spirit that longs to be one with an unsullied creation. And when the critical step-father (inner or outer) asks "What the hell....?" , just smile softly and enjoy being quiet in response.

All the places I've loved.

They are still there,

inhabiting their experience.

I can visit them all when I am still.

All the people I've loved,

they are still there, in this moment.

Some are transposed.

Some are lost within their sacred ordinariness,

experiencing their experience.

I can visit them all!

Time, place, circumstance are all a spiral of the spirit.

The way home to the beloved is close, very close.

It is just across the folds of the universe.

I bring the realities of all these into the basket of my heart.

Sweetness.

No death,

No time in a line.

Moments of forever and ever.

Love,
Rick

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

Eternity of Moments

My Brother and I in August 1972, three months before he passed away. These are happy moments that still live in my body.

Moments
of silence like song.

My brother in Idaho 1972.

Moments.
That's what I have,
moments in a circle
that once looked like
a straight line.   

 From my new book Simple Life

If you had just one moment to begin eternity in, if there was a moment from which you could launch into forever, what would it be?

Pause and sit with this.

Is it hard to choose just one moment from your life?

Or is it  hard to choose any moments?

What does the answer say about your life or your presence in your life?

Let's narrow down And expand the scope of the question.

Choose a person that you currently consider a close friend. What moment in your life with them would you choose to carry with you into eternity? Any? Many? Are there regrets that need to be released or healed?

And expand even more: 

Think of a past person, animal or place you've loved. Is there a moment you had with them that you would want to carry with you, or even live in? 

Now go deeper and refine the question again. 

What about experiences that were mixxy, perturbed and challenging.  Was there an instance of clarity or healing that you would choose to recall in eternity? What about someone who has vexed you. Did that person touch you and bring joy nonetheless?

Looking at the question in another way:

Today... What if this day were The Day you'd live forever? What if you could move through this very day without regard to linear reckoning? What would you choose to believe, to do or inhabit? Which senses, sights and bodily sensations would you want to foster?

If this very moment was the launching point for eternity what would you pray or think or do in your life right now?

This is my glimmering on life:

The Moment of Eternity IS NOW.

I wonder if our heavens and hells and purgatories are not out there somewhere, someday. I wonder if the supposed afterlife is more akin with how we choose to inhabit and really experience this life.

Lately I've felt this existential challenge about what is all this work and experience for? What's the point? Is this all there is? How much do I really inhabit my everyday experiences? And does it matter that I do? I've wonder if hell is really just a way of regret. Perhaps hell is when you realize that you've lived disconnected and separate throughout life. Like there was no real joy and now it's too late. Well it's never too late to re inhabit your life, or re-enliven memories of your particular experiences.

I have a theory that a life purpose is simply to share all my experiences with Creation, Creator and Community when it comes time for this particular body to dissolve. At that time no experience will be either good or bad. But I think that the quality of how we inhabited experiences, the Vital essence of our bodily life, will be like manna to our spirits.

So I ask the questions again. 

If this were the launching point of eternity how would I be present in my body and life, how would I connect with people and love them in a way beyond sentimentality and yearning? How can we really be with each other in this gift of life and living? As William Stafford said: "Someday is now."

 Rick

PS. The series Two Weeks in an American Ashram, will continue later in March.

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

Days 6-7 A Fire Ceremony in Winter

This is what we keep

going through, the lyrical

changes, the strangeness

in which I know again

what I have known before.

Wendell Berry: The Recognition

New Collected Poems, p.185

Winter comes for a visit. It is 28 degrees outside and 42 degrees inside the trailer. So, I move down to the warmth of the dining area to work on a long time writing project. Everyone else is working in the kitchen or in yoga training or in meditation. I sit at a long table, alone with eleven empty chairs. Outside, snow spirals lazily. Inside the darkness of my own karma sits as shadows all around the table.

I am, again, writing and arranging the story I've held in my body for seven years. It's a story of spiritual power and ecstasy, a story of illicit love and the death of my best friend. It's a story I long to tell, somehow,  someday, or my life might feel incomplete. And it's a story that vexes me at every keystroke, every rewrite and every attempt to say what I really want to say. Here I am, again writing and plotting. This is the work that I love and that loves me. And this is the work that I sometimes dread and resist.

For eight hours I endeavor to move the contents of 280,000 words into some order. I feel driven and sure of my mission as I write and re-write this book. But there is an emptiness about it too. Because words fail to convey the real truth of what love and loss are capable of.

Toward the end of the day, as the ice begins to thicken, a friend walks in and invites me to a fire ceremony. I accept the invitation and I close the computer and walk with him to the temple. The gist of the ceremony is to become clear on what one wishes to release, describing that intention to the congregants and then literally burning the old ways as a public recognition of moving onward.

Here I was in ceremony, writing something again. I knelt at the altar with a trembling sheet of snow white paper. Upon it were words like "not being enough", "being dishonestly nice", "feeling alone much of the time". I burned the paper! The facilitator (swami) laid her hand on my spiritual eye in the middle of my forehead and blessed me. And it was over. No bells or flashes or thunder. Just simple communal ceremony.

The next day I awoke with the driving desire to get my writing just right. I went down to the dining hall. Same table. Same snow. Same drive. I turned on the computer. There was an unexpected event in the hard wire. All the information I'd so feverishly rearranged and rewritten had disappeared from the memory. I had little reaction to the loss, which I found to be curious. I just said to myself "Oh, I guess that's that."

And I wondered "Who is it that observes all of this coming and going within me?"  

I noticed how I was different after my work disappeared. Not so heavy. But instead of feeling surprised I thought "This is how I naturally feel: Light". I wondered how many limitations I had set on my writing and my life with the need to call myself by labels like depressed, too sensitive for the likes on mankind, unseen, alone etc. etc.?

Then I closed the now blank progress of the old writing project. It was not as if the sad sorry feelings had disappeared. It's that I could hear other parts of me with more clarity.

So, I opened up a new screen and wrote a poem. It was a poem that had little to do with my projects or wants. It was not a good poem or even one that has deep meaning. It simply made me smile. It was just my little song at that moment.

I looked outside. The sun was peeking through the swirling clouds. Our two days of winter had passed. More snow will come in the future I'm sure. But not now.

Here's the little song I wrote

Moon of my night,

Star of my morning,

Earth of my day

I love Thee 

I love Thee

I love Thee.

Breath of my dreams,

Fire of my experience,

Water of my eternal birth

I love Thee,

I love Thee,

I love Thee.

Earth: Holy, Holy.

Life: Sacred, Sacred.

Death: illusion, illusion.

Beloved I love Thee

Beloved I love Thee

Beloved I love Thee.

And I smile, reading this again.

May you discover who observes this life experience within you.
And in the discovery, find a simple thought or song or poem that brings a smile to your face. It doesn't have to be pretty, proper or correct. It only has to be yours and real in these moments of sun or passing snow.

Peace
Rick

(c) Copyright Richard Sievers, January 2013, All Rights Reserved

The Presence Beneath the Storm

The Presence Beneath the Storm in the Field

This is a revised version of the blog I posted and then deleted on Halloween. 

We  recently hosted an intimate gathering of friends to read poems in remembrance of our ancestors. We shared a circle of poems while orbiting a candle-lit altar of photographs and mementos of the dead. It was sweet and expanding to take in the voices of my friends. I was inspired to witness people standing bravely at a podium to read their grief and gratitude.  Rumi reflects my feelings about friendship shared in this way in his poem This We Have Now Here’s an excerpt of Rumi’s poem as translated by Coleman Barks *

This we have now  

is not imagination. 

   

This is not  

grief or joy.  

 

Not a judging state,  

or an elation,  

or sadness. 

 

Those come and go. ..

   

This is the presence  

that doesn’t… 

 

What else could human beings want? …   

When we turned out the lights, and left the studio everyone felt the mystery of deep love come with them into the night. I slept deeply that night, with a smile.

Then I woke up to challenges in my personal life. The world of  neither this nor that, neither good or bad, had faded within my sleep. In the morning I found myself feeling cut off and alone. The reasons why are not so important. It’s just part of the human experience.  Up and down, happy and sad… These are feelings that everyone has. They come and go.

I found myself wondering what difference I made with my writing. I found the shadow within me rising in the ashes the great light of the previous night. Indeed it was a night that I felt reflected holiness, heaven and hope. Isn’t it amazing how the dark feelings also want to flower from the sweet earth of prayer and service?

I  spent the next day planting an orchard in our field.  Fourteen supple apple saplings. These are trees that I hope will outlive me and my concerns. I was digging with a fervor. I had also been spinning down a hole of my supposedly being alone in the world, of other people not caring, of my particular work on earth being pointless.

So I paused and put down the shovel.

Then I asked myself "Why am I falling into a dark place of feeling less than and alone? Where is my self worth as a writer?"  I had been feeling unique in an experience of alienation. Not so.

 
Is there any place for a poet or artist in our society of put down humor and murderous video games?  What about other wonderists, or dreamers, or conversationalists, or yogis, or prayerful farmers? What if everyone felt alone in the sometime sense of alienation and separation? I just stood and looked into the muddy hole I was digging.

I paused.

A chant from yoga moved through my body:

Chidananda rupa shivoham shivoham  

It's a Sanskrit chant remembering loving consciousness, divinity and even bliss. I felt more solid. I began to sing while the rain began to fall gently. Then I came up here to my cabin, to this flickering screen of many colors and I wrote to you. 

I wonder what thoughts I am planting in my soul?

Is there a place for the dreamer, the sensitive and the even the childlike?  Yes… YES… there is a place! It’s inside the heart. And it was in our little studio on a stormy night last week. Where is the place of Presence for you?

I returned to field. I recalled the joy of being with friends and the presence that never leaves. I went and sliced more sod, laid down more compost and untangled more pot bound roots. I planted gratitude and an honoring of All of my feelings, pretty or not.

Whatever creative endeavors that come to you, no matter how spindly or muddy, plant them. Nourish them. Let no one, not even your inner critic, tear them down. Remember the One that never leaves us and always loves us.

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Words and images copyright (c) of Rick Sievers, 2011

* An excerpt from the Book: The Essential Rumi, a Translation by Coleman Barks, Harper Publishers, 1995