MAGICAL MOMENTS

Dear Nora,
Thanks so much for sending me the book by post, “Magical Moments with Canada Geese” by your late beloved husband, Creighton. I got it a couple of weeks ago, and I found it delightful reading. It’s his childlike awe and wonder of Mother Nature that I find very appealing. He’s truly a child of Nature. Now I know why you had to get married up in a mountain. I also understand that his fascination with birds especially Canada geese include as well the elements of Nature such as water in all its natural forms -- streams, brooks, ponds, let alone the land, valleys, hills, and mountains, the totality of all wild life. To be saturated in All That Is, he has to put down the baggage of his problems of past and future, as well as all the knowledge he learned in schools and at the Columbia University where he got his college degree and PhD., otherwise he will not see what he sees, he will not hear what he hears.

How often must he have gazed up into infinity of space on a clear night, awestruck by the absolute stillness and inconceivable vastness of the galaxies of stars above. His total presence is required to become aware of the beauty, the majesty, and the sacredness of nature. He must have listened, truly listened to the sound of a mountain stream. Or to the song of a nightingale at dusk on a quiet summer evening. In fact, Beauty arises when in stillness, he is contemplating its Presence. He then begins to feel the freedom of the realization that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that Intelligence.

Once, he can feel what it means to be present in the moment, or the Now, it becomes much easier to simply step out of linear time dimension to bring more consciousness into his life in ordinary situations when everything is going relatively smoothly as it generates an energy field in him and around him of a high vibrational frequency. In this timeless dimension, the author writes about a freedom that he attains when he is not dependent so much on his being “the thinker” but on some invisible beings of Nature as elucidated in a chapter called The Oasis, viz.: “The Friendly Spirits had apparently decided to be especially kind to me in the early autumn afternoon of the year 2000. My wife, Nora, and I were just gadding about. Earlier, I had initiated a business transaction nearby. Now, we were free to go anywhere within 120 miles, eat at any time at any place we choose, and return home at any hour. We were free spirits.”

I know that this sense of freedom is “heaven” for him. We need to understand that “heaven” is not a location, it refers to an inner realm of consciousness. This is the esoteric meaning for the word “heaven,“ according to the mystical writer Eckhart Tolle, author of A New Earth, and that’s also its meaning to Jesus Christ. Earth Mother is the outer manifestation in form of this heaven, which is always a reflection of the inner. Creighton Forester Seely will continue to live in the hearts of those who read his book “Magical Moments with Canada Geese,” and who find in him a kindred spirit.

I wish there were more writers like him, especially at this time when only past and future are considered important. Our mind has become so dysfunctional in the new 21st century that it is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it -– who are you? The mind constantly projects itself into the future to ensure its continual survival and to be able to say – “One day, when this, that or the other happens, I am going to be okay, to be rich, happy, at peace.” Even if the mind or the ego, seems to be concerned with the present, it misperceives it completely, according to Eckhart Tolle, because the mind looks at it through the eyes of the past. Tolle asks us then to observe our mind, the way it works, as it is inclined to reduce the present to a means to an end. I have not fully understood the point of what Tolle is aiming at, till I encountered the experience of C. F. Seely’s in this book about his magical moments with Canada geese. Here, some nameless, ineffable, some deep inner essence starts to shine through us by gazing into the luminous eyes of a cat or a majestic eagle or a lovely Canada goose as in Creighton’s case. In his enlightened state, he is still able to use his mind when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than most people do. Not that C. F. Seely wants to be a meditator who oscillates between stillness and activeness as natural Buddhists do (that means anyone can be a Buddhist even if he/she is Christian or Jew if religious beliefs have been transcended since buddhism is not a religion but a philosophy of life) yet in his quiet, curious creativity he might as well be a walking meditator, and he is, in essence.

Thought alone, when it is no longer connected with the much vaster realm of consciousness quickly becomes barren, insane, destructive. The planet Earth is gradually being destroyed by people whose minds no longer seem to be connected with that much vaster realm of consciousness since wild life and human consciousness are intrinsically one with the planet’s life. As the old consciousness dissolves, and a new consciousness as befits a New Earth arises there is bound to be a synchronistic climatic and natural upheavals killing numerous thousands in many parts of the planet of which we have been witnessing of late like the horrors of China and Myanmar's catastrophes.

In his search for a suitable place in a farm where he can raise a few goslings, Seely speaks of the events surrounding the collision of his vehicle with a moose while driving his “reliable 1966 chevy truck Candida that forced him to delay his return to Goose Valley.” He goes further: “I set out for the sanctuary with mixed emotions. At that time I was not yet aware of my good fortune regarding the opportunity to save my old truck. I was somewhat ashamed to be driving her in damaged condition. I had received many compliments regarding her appearance over the years. I realized that she had probably helped to protect me from serious injury. The policeman had summed up the situation perfectly. ‘I hope you realize that if you had been driving a much newer vehicle I would not be talking to you here. You would either be in the hospital or in the morgue. They just don’t build them like this anymore. You are a very lucky man.’ ” Take note of his positive, childlike attitude towards danger. In his lack of an anxiety gap called fear, like a trusting child of Nature, he has not lose touch with the power and simplicity of the Moment or the Now. Otherwise, that anxiety gap that often attacks most of us under threat of danger, will be his constant companion.

I wish there were more writers like Creighton Seely at this critical time of the Quantum Leap to a higher consciousness dimension when the paradigms are shifting. It is our good fortune that we have met someone who writes in the company of the awakened great writers of all time, who subscribe to the ancient belief that goes:
Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside: it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.

Our writer continues his saga on the "Mountain View Plantation" he has expanded to eleven acres as his property in Canada, that features five ponds, a brook, three wells, a sugar shack, and a house, which he calls "Lovelight," where picture windows open to the scenic vistas around it so he can continue to watch the birds. He goes: “I started my search in 1957. I would search on and off until 1982. There were several farms located a mile from the Customs and Immigration building where I worked. They were located on a high hill – high enough that one can see Mount Katahdin located abut fifty miles to the west. I love Mt. Katahdin. My mother declared that I was obsessed with it. Nora and I were married on it in 1977 – the first time anyone had been married there.”

I can sense that he knows a sacred truth about the universe. Everything, a bird, a tree, even a simple stone, and certainly a human being is ultimately unknowable. It is because it has unfathomable depth, you will know what I mean when a guy like Creighton Forester Seely writes words made into sounds and endearing sights of his recollection of the Meduxnekeng Stream, west of Woodstock, in Canada, back in his youth where almost every Sunday he and a friend would walk two miles to the site of a former power dam, during much of September and October to observe a small flock of Canada geese “ as they rested on a calm and shallow backwater to the right of a short stretch of white water” one can get excited experiencing the view from there and sense what he remembers – “the fragrance wafting in the crisp autumn breeze, the sunlight sparkling on the water below. I can still see the brilliant foliage. As soon as our heads appeared over the horizon, the flock would rise from the water and head west following the valley until they disappeared from view.”

There is something “mystical” about these Sunday trips to watch the magical Canada geese flying in a majestic V formation coming from a great distance that I could sense. It’s not a religious feeling, as in a fascination with church’s rituals on Sundays if one is a Catholic, but as an unfathomable feeling of communion with Nature. A mystical feeling of Presence is felt here to become aware of the beauty, the majesty, the sacredness of nature. As when, our author continues: “One Sunday, that well-established pattern was broken. On that memorable day, as the flock gained altitude, I called them as usual. I still remember, with unabashed pride and joy, their response to my eager yelps. They circled back, passing just below eye level. Some of them were less than ninety feet from Clair and me. Apparently, they wanted a closer look at the humans who had tried so often to communicate with them.”

For the last eleven years (“eleven” is a symbolic number for me, connoting a sense of duality that exists in the human mind) I have wrestled with the most perplexing question: what is the pattern that connects? What connects the crab nebula in the sky with the genes of the Canada geese on earth or the genes in Creighton’s body ? What pattern connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the gumamela and all four of them to me? And to you? The crucial connection is made between our moral behavior and our love of Mother Nature.
Till then, Namaste, Georgie