Each day, before I meditate, I read a passage from a book that is intended to help me focus my attention and intention.
The books vary greatly, but they mainly could be categorized as nonfiction prose written about spirituality, religion or philosophy.
Every once in a while though I find my brain seems to have stone-walled any new input.
I will be sitting on my living room floor on my meditation cushion reading and re-reading the same sentence or paragraph again and again, but not internalizing its meaning.
This of course causes me to become very frustrated, which in turn guarantees that no new knowledge or understanding will be coming through to me that day.
I have learned though, through this trial and error process, that poetry, not prose, can sometimes penetrate what feels like a brick wall of stuckness inside of me.
This awareness came through to me much more clearly when I heard British poet and philosopher David Whyte describe the potential for poetry in this way:
I always say that poetry is language against which you have no defenses. Otherwise, it’s not poetry. It’s prose. Which is about something. And so poetry is that moment in a conversation where you have to have the other person understand what you’re saying. And sometimes, it’s when you’re delivering terrible news, news of a death or an accident. And you have to tell the other person, and they have to hear it. And you have to say it in such a way that it’s heard fully. But you have to say it, also, with the intimacy of care and of understanding at the same time.
“Against which you have no defenses.” That’s it. That is totally it.
Poetry cuts right through my intellectualizing and rationalizing, my humor, my suppressing and repressing, my fantasizing and of course my near and dear sublimating. Have I missed any?
It’s like one minute I am feeling aloof, disconnected and unfocused. And the next, I am yanked, head-first into the moment- head, heart, body and all. It’s delicious!
American poet Mary Oliver says this of poetry:
Poetry is prayer, it is passion and story and music, it is beauty, comfort, it is agitation, declaration, it is thanksgiving… Often poetry is the gate to a new life. Or, sometimes the restoration of an old world gone…poetry can quicken, enliven the interior world of the listener… Poetry is a life-cherishing force… For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes, indeed.
I have included below a few poems that have been able to break through the seemingly impermeable space between the outer world and my well-protected soul inside. Sometimes, it wasn’t even the whole poem either- it may have been just a line, or even just a word.
Really incredible when you sit back and think about it…
Please enjoy the poems, and consider sharing some of your own favorite poems that broke through your own interior brick wall.
Body Intelligence, by Jelaluddin Rumi
Your intelligence is always with you,
overseeing your body, even though
you may not be aware of its work.
If you start doing something
against your health, your intelligence
will eventually scold you.
If it had not been so lovingly close by,
and so constantly monitoring,
how could it rebuke?
You and your body’ intelligence
are like the beauty and precision
of an astrolabe.
Together, you calculate how near
existence is to the sun.
Your intelligence is marvelously intimate.
It is not in front of you or behind,
or to the left or the right.
Now, my friend, try to describe how near
is the creator of your intelligence.
There are guides
who can show you the way.
Use them.
But they will not satisfy your longing.
Keep wanting the connection with presence
with all your pulsing energy.
The throbbing vein
will take you further
than any thinking.
Muhammed said, Do not theorize
about essence. All speculations
are just more layers of covering.
Human beings love coverings.
They think the designs on the curtains
are what is being concealed.
Observe the wonders as they occur around you.
Do not claim them. Feel the artistry
moving through, and be silent.
The Buddha’s Last Instruction, by Mary Oliver
“Make of yourself a light,”
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal — a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire —
clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.
[My favorite line in this poem is: clearly I’m not needed, / yet I feel myself turning /
into something of inexplicable value. Gorgeous language.]
“Unknown Title” by Jelaluddin Rumi
I went inside my heart
to see how it was.
Something there makes me hear
the whole world weeping.
Then I went to every city and small town,
searching for someone who could speak wisdom,
but everyone was complaining about love.
That moaning gave me an idea: Go back inside
and find the answer. But I found nothing.
The heart acts as translator between
mystical experience and intelligence.
It has its own inhabitants who do not talk
with someone just wandering through.
And remember that Muhammed said of the place
in human beings we call the heart,
This is what I value.
If I hold you with my emotions,
you'll become a wished-for companion.
If I hold you with my eyes,
you'll grow old and die.
So I hold you where we
both mix with the infinite.
[I love the very first line in this poem: I went inside my heart / to see how it was.]
This Trembling Heart by Rashani
i did not wake up one day
and choose to love you
or decide
that my life would now
be focused
in your direction.
this trembling heart
like a magnetized needle
of a compass,
a splayed, obsidian lotus
in a sea of fire
simply returns again
and mysteriously again
to where your soul resides ,
to the breathing star dust
and tender flesh
which temporarily hold
the flowering river
of who you are.
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