Going to the Source

Look, Ink is Bleeding Through My Fingers!

The farm season is winding down. The season to expand inward, the season to create and write is here. For four hot months the characters in the new book have waited patiently. They have been pulled with the weeds and sowed with seed. They have been given away through the sweat of a summer's tilling and harvests. They are patient, but time moves on... at least in this realm.

Sitting at the writing desk A blank mind blinks in the blue cursor of a white screen How do we begin again? My fingers hover and hesitate over the keyboard. I feel shy, like a besotted lover who has been on a long singular journey, one who finally is arriving home to his sweetheart. Who moves first? What do we say? How do the words become loving actions from a clarified Autumnal heart?

Many questions. Analysis about writer's block won't help with answers. Figuring how to arrange the schedule and desk and the files of electrons in the mainframe won't help. Go directly to the sources, the characters of the soon to be book or canvas. What do you say patient ones? How do we begin?

And the pen begins a long arc. Messy words tumble and splash all over my hands and onto the page. The meanings are inarticulate, clumsy at first. But I will write anyway. I just keep at it. And soon the lover will become familiar again. Soon the characters will be more than projections; they begin live in my dreams again. Soon their words are sowed upon the willing page.

A poem comes through the conversation as so many poems do:


Talking With Two Characters While Writing the New Book
                                   It’s Time: Just Write the Damned Book
I’m helping you come alive.
Sure, I know you are both me.
Finding your voice is finding my voice.
You are bringing me to light too.

So, why is it so hard to co-create you here?

“It’s difficult, being born.” you say.
“It’s difficult facing death.” you say.
“It’s wonderful being seen by bringing light to the darkness.” I reply.

Yep, we can trade platitudes all day, Spirit and me.
That becomes a day divided against itself,
a transport of circularities.

“Just commit to yourself.” you say.
“I don’t know that self.” I reply.

“So make yourself up.
Write it.
Write us.
Write yourself.”
~~~~
Whatever your endeavor, from within a heart of love and devotion take solace. It is in the beginning again and again that miracles occur. It is in the willing efforts of the spirit and hand that new life is born.

If you dream it, then begin it. And see where the words and colors lead you.

Blessings to you dear readers. May your characters and colors and living ink splash upon the canvas of your lives.

Rick




(c) Copyright on Image and Words, Richard Sievers, September 2015

Hollowed by the Flame

In the gloaming on Sunset Beach, Anacortes, WA.

I found this poem I wrote crumpled in the sheaves of my journal:

Walking in the gloaming garden,
my skin gliding through the silken quiet,
orange, mauve light surrounding every being,
this body both vessel of the journey and the stillness,
this body my home, container and confinement.

Glass walls surround my vision.
I am like a lightning bug spinning in a jar.

It is sunset soon.
Soon the lid will be undone,
the confinement shattered.
The glass will fall and
the light that is me will fly
into the dark.

Across the top of the page I wrote

I can only burn so much ecstasy
without becoming hollowed out by the flame.

Creator, make me a clear and resonant instrument for your songs.

Reader, may you discover the light that is within you and may you find freedom in that light.


Love,
Rick


(c) Copyright Richard Sievers, August 2015

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