First view of my island land in the San Juan Islands in 2001
photo (c) Rick Sievers 2001
After thousands of words writing my new book I put my tired hands down. Why am I here? What do I really want with the writing of this particular story? I was grateful to get a glimmering of this as lay on yoga mat in my lovely circle of friends.* Thank you circle for opening space for me to be still and begin to remember who I am. These are the first raw words of my new book:
The Book Under the Book:
Most nights The Spirits come. In dreams, floating up and around me,
watching me, touching me tenderly. Some nights They take me to the place that
is no place at all. Some nights They take me into Their houses in fields of star-lights that sing and moan with wordless wonder of the original song of the
universe. Some nights I rest in Their arms, or play with Their words like putty,
or swim in Their oceans with shining cities beneath me.
I awaken in the morning, sometimes drugged, because holding
the joy and the sadness is so painful in a world that seems to be mutilating itself.
Most mornings I awaken and for moments my body is not afraid of dying or of living. For moments my body
is eager to express the wonder of that place of “wows”. But this experience on
sacred wounded Earth is a place of vows and loss. And I forget.
I promised my soul that I would really be here
in my life and circumstances this time around. But it’s so hard when waking
in the morning means that my heart begins to afraid again. Sometimes
I see why my Grandmother chose to die at age 50. The tangled world of consensuality
can be so challenging to the soul, so challenging to remain awake in, so
challenging to not take the lessons we dance with personally.
One sweet spring night seven years ago I lay my body down in
a room with 30 people intent on spiritual journeys a compassionate magic. I lay
my body down. And my spirit rose up and out… but now away. I touched something
so wonderful and beautiful it hurt to recall. Almost terrible in it’s beauty. A
red star pulsed in the crown of Orion. I went into the burning and I sat in a
field as solid as what we call real. A single blade of grass bent low beside me
and quivered in the breeze. Al the magic, all the miracles, all the posturing
language, all the yearning for things and acceptance and understanding fell
away in a moment. I swear I was there for eternity. I swear, I have never left
that place.
Yet my consciousness came back here to this world, back to
the room with arguments and hurts and love affairs that seemed so important at
the time. Back to this reflection of the Great Beauty from the Song of the
Universe. Back to forgetting again. There are moments that are so poignant or
painful or lovely that I must go into that small seed on the swaying grass head
and remember. The universe is joy incarnate.
And here it is also pain.
When I arrived back in the circle of friends after that
journey I cried…. no, I wept loudly for several hours. I stumbled outside into
the mid California night fragrances and fell into the dirt. Over and over I
cried out to the Benevolent Spirits: “Why did you have to show me that?? It’s
so beautiful. It’s so wonderful. Why? Why?” I wondered how I could remain here in corporeal
form and be away from that full knowing. I sensed that reintegrating into my everyday life after this would be hard. I didn't know how the yearning and remembering would tear my sense world apart. It was a profound mystery to me.
Today, after losing the touch of so many of those friends
and the kiss of my once upon a time Anam Cara, I have a hunch about the “why”.
Somehow I need to tell about the nature of the wonder that we are all destined
for, the wonder of true love that is everywhere and nowhere at all. Poetry
seemed like a good place to start, and then surrender to my life and to the
griefs that have been carried by all my ancestors, and perhaps all of our ancestors.
I don’t know how to start explaining that single blade of
grass that was singing. For me, it was God Universal cloaked in a form that I could
touch for a moment… just a glimmering of what really is true.
This book could be a story about fostering spiritual power,
searching for healing, becoming a man and then being torn from limb to limb… so
that somehow I might give you, beloved reader, a glimpse of wonder. Or it may
be to tell you we are not alone, we the beginning of the new age, we the opened
and destroyed, we the merely human. You are not alone. And I am writing this to
remind myself to cling to the voice whispering in my sleep: “Soon my love we
will be as one. Soon.”
I write to channel the sadness of sleeping through my own
life into a gift to the world and especially to my grandmother who felt so alone when she
died. I write to remember who I am before the end, before the Great Song rises
through my body and takes me to a crimson star.
Love,
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Copyright (c) on image and words Rick Sievers, 2011
* My Yoga Community:
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