You, my own deep soul,
trust me, I will not betray you.
My blood is alive with many voices
telling me I am made of longing.
What mystery breaks over me now?
In its shadow I come into life.
For the first time I am alone with you –
you, my power to feel.
by Reiner Maria Rilke, translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows
Such an intimate connecting in this poem with Rilke’s ‘own deep soul’, in this poem from the Book of Hours… In it I hear the willingness to turn toward and the capacity to be with what’s there, plus the strong commitment to not abandon onself that is expressed in the sentence ‘trust me, I will not betray you’.
In mindfulness we set out to ‘know what is happening, while it’s happening, no matter what it is’, and this goes for noticing my butterfly mind flitting from this to that and the noises of the traffic outside etcetera, but also for what moves itself in ‘my own deep soul’. What are the voices alive in our blood saying? How do we become still enough to listen and really hear what’s there? And how do we create the conditions for our own soul and those deep voices to continue to communicate when maybe we’ve been too busy to listen to them, or perhaps we were busy listening to other parts of ourselves, or to the demands of the world, or the lure of distractions… Many reasons why we might not be awake to what is happening in the deeper layers of our being, which may not be our fault, but definitely is our own responsibility. And it may be that when we allow ourselves to be alone with our power to feel, the internal voices are very ready to tell what’s important for them – and that we can find greater alignment with living our core values.
The practice of listening deeply to what moves itself within me is often not straightforward, but there’s a truthfulness that I value more than the comfort of convenience or the status quo. And who knows what might happen next…
PS if you’d like to connect more deeply with yourself, the compassion course that is about to start may support with that…