Navigating a self-altering future

The attractiveness of 'the law of attraction' in everyday life is that it declares that you have the potential to control your thoughts. Of all things possible to control, one's own thoughts are perhaps the most rebellious of all. It is a sweet victory to be able to claim truthfully, "I control and, indeed, lead my thoughts." Even where one manages to achieve it occasionally, my experience teaches that it remains, daily, an effort. Writing down your thoughts does help.

The elusiveness of our thoughts may be, because many thoughts are not exactly conscious; nor, frequently, are they owned by, or originate from within, the self. 

In 'Staying Connected', Rudolf Steiner went so far as to say that our thoughts are infusions from the spirits of the dead in their attempts to lead (presumaby they could also mislead) us. I have yet to get through, let alone understand, his book Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path. I do not have my own copy and vaguely recall early passages in that book being concerned with discovering one's true motivations; I confess that I still belong to that class of lesser mortals for whom dwelling on true motivatons initiates a definite adventure into smoky territory.

I won't even mention the infusion or influence of thoughts from the living into our conscious- and subconsciousness - I am sure that every person reading this can attest to the confusions, convictions, delusions and intoxications caused by mental and physical continguity with the living. 

Yet everywhere, these days, is the popular slogan seen - 'Build the future YOU want'. On one level, this could be seen as an open rebellion against David's plea, 'I shall not want', in Psalm 23. (Some bright sparks have deemed fit to translate this line as 'I lack nothing', but that is too monodimensional for me.) Yet it would be fair to give the slogan the benefit of the doubt - building what you want can by all means chime with the laws of Nature, or God, or the general good, all of which are forces far more long-lived than the potent little microcosm of your self.

The climate of the times tends strongly towards encouraging the assertion of individual human will over him- or herself, in order to harness and calibrate experiences, decisions and choices, and I strongly motivate for self-control in thought and action - it's a pretty exciting thing to be investing time and energy in, mainly because it grants you the possibility of genuine friendship with the most elusive aspect of your life: your embodied self on this earth, thoughts and all.

Once you begin to be able to change ancient patterns in your behaviour, you are rearing, or re-parenting, your self. This generates new imaginative possibilities for you - possibilities beyond imagining, so to speak. It does mean no longer tolerating stuff that once used, maybe, to be 'inevitable'.

Perhaps some of these free-flowing strands are useful to you as you navigate and build.

Blue cranes in fallow fields. Photo by Sigi Heiss.

 

 

  

The sacred cups of words

I am speaking to somebody who has no experience in either reading or writing poems, but who is interested in the craft.
"Tell me," he says, "how it works."
"People make the mistake of taking words for things," I reply. "Everywhere you find people arguing - often they are arguing about nothing more than which words to use for some idea. They toss them to and fro like balls.
"But for a poet, words are cups. You fill them with feeling, the feeling that flows through you."
"I get that," says my friend.
"Yes. But in the first place, the feeling is one between just you and yourself, or you and God, or you and Nature, or you and Silence, or you and your lover ... whatever name you give to the state of being at-one in a particular moment.
"It can happen anywhere - in a pub, beside a stream, at a table with friends - whatever. When you listen attentively, words find you, if you're that way inclined.
"The right words always find you when you listen with your heart."
"But if I do that," he retorts, "I don't get a poem. I just get a list - say, like ..."
He rattles off several nouns.
"That's ok," I say. "You write them down, straight - stream-of-consciousness. Get it down.
"Then, when that's done, you can look at what you've got. That's the point at which you can tentatively start using your conscious mind - how can I string these words together so they make sense?
"In a way, you are taking the words like molecules of feeling. Two separate hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom don't make water. But when they combine, they make something we can drink, and wash and cook with, and swim in.
"So you link your words into something bigger than the separate words - something which you, and later your reader, can assimilate.
"Thought-water, if you like. Or thought-wine."
"I've written," he says, "quite a lot. But I've always thrown it away."
"That is good," I say. "You offer your creation in the first place to yourself, or to God; maybe to a friend you trust. The process of offering gives you feedback and matures you.
"Keep working in this way. You'll find your own voice this way. You'll learn to discriminate between what is truly yours and what is not.
"Don't think of publishing.
"Publishing is not writing and it is not reading. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the cups of words in their mysterious beginning.
"Publishing only comes as a very last stage - when your combinations of words have reached a point of being sufficiently strong to be buffeted by the physical world - a world where things are chaotic, competitive and not at-one.
"This stage requires you as a poet to be strong - stronger than you can be when you are creating a poem, where you have to be soft and open as a baby."
I read him a poem.
"That is so beautiful," he says.
"It's a lifetime behind this," I remind him, "a lifetime of being a baby.
"Creating poems is an organic process and the initial conception in the womb of your heart's music is of necessity vulnerable and sacred."

- Silke Heiss, 9th April 2019

Perfectly Present - title poem from Section 5 of Greater Matter

The tortoise of me is making slow, but steady progress. Here's the title poem from the fifth section of Greater Matter.

Perfectly Present

I spent time with fellow-widow Gwyneth

– our regular weekly keeping tabs

on our days, work,

thoughts, experiences –

she too’d been mugged

by the mugginess dragging down the sky;

that it wasn’t only me who was dof  was reassuring.

Over tea and cake and talk

there was a cooling,

we discussed the blessing of thoughts that appear as beings,

intentions that catch you in motion

before you’ve thought –

our obedience to intuition

makes us a port

for

Spirit.

I came home to the sunflung polka dots of white roses dancing

in the hedge beside the garage door;

and writing this now

– not in the obligatory present tense

(which many modern writers use for no better reason than to hog an effect)

but in the elegiac mood

of reverence that holds in faith

that which we can’t

grasp –

I am certain

that what is past

is perfectly present.

- Silke Heiss

No why ever

Blue cranes -
snow-threaded mountains -
kites hunting, and
a sky - haired and studded with cloud -

blurred, but finding
water's shapelinesses combing through
my human thoughts
to hold

the crystal of a landscape never broken,
and no why? ever spoken.