You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing
that is more than your own.
Let it brush your cheeks
as it divides and rejoins behind you.
Blessed ones, whole ones,
you where the heart begins:
You are the bow that shoots the arrows
and you are the target.
Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back
into the earth;
for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.
The trees you planted in childhood have grown
too heavy. You cannot bring them along.
Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.

Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

This poem, by Austrian poet Rilke, gives us guidance for using breath as a support in the way only a poem could. The words don’t make easy sense in common parlance. But if we let our usual assumptions of sense-making loosen, if we let the words resonate within an open awareness, perhaps then they’ll make a kind of visceral, heart-felt, intuitive sense.

How do you feel in your body when you imagine that your breath ‘divides and rejoins behind you’?

The poem elevates meditation with the breath towards a mystical practice. It invites us to experience our breath not as ‘our own’, but as a way to ‘give yourselves to air’; breath coming from a greater expanse of movement and being, which we can’t hold on to, but can ease back into.

Then there’s the invitation to ‘Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back into the earth’. The word ‘back’ here is an important reminder to similarly not ‘own’ our pain in the way we may often do. Our pain is the pain of the earth, because we are born of Earth. All human beings have their own stories of suffering. These define us as human, and they also gradually season us towards the beauty of deep humanity.

What wisdom poems have for us, if we take the time to really let their gifts in!

Ps. Join me for the upcoming Mystical Poetry meets Mindfulness course which begins soon.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

by Joy Harjo

This poem, by the current US poet laureate Joy Harjo of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, feels like a beautiful practice instruction to me. There’s something soothing and expansive about the circular motion which seems to wheel through the poem. Letting the huge, spacious circles of the eagle sweep through my heart, cleaning it with ‘sacred wings’ brings such a welcome sensation of being deeply refreshed and made new.

Sometimes I can feel the blessing of being alive, more so when I’m aware of the truth of death, and it’s comforting to see this as part of the great circle of life. To know myself as part of this great circle of coming and going soothes the shadowy presence of my existential anxiety and reduces the importance of my daily agitations.

‘Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed’.

What a wonderful gratitude mantra to take into the day.

Photo by Rachel McDermott on Unsplash

This body is not me.
I am not limited by this body,
I am life without boundaries.
I have never been born,
and I have never died.

Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars,
manifestations from my wondrous true mind.
Since before time, I have been free.
Birth and death are only doors through which we pass, sacred thresholds on our journey.
Birth and death are a game of hide-and-seek.

So laugh with me,
hold my hand,
let us say goodbye,
say goodbye to meet again soon.

We meet today.
We will meet again tomorrow.
We will meet at the source every moment.
We meet each other in all forms of life.

by Thich Nhat Hanh

One of the well-known contemplation-poems by the wonderful Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, who died on the 22nd of January of this year after a generously long life of teaching in many forms. A couple of years ago, one of his senior disciples was interviewed about how Thay, as he is known to his students, was using the last years of his life to teach about how to die peacefully.

I am once again struck by how teachings about death also are profound invitations to live fully and to cherish this aliveness. In the week where our dear friend and colleague Chloe Homewood-Allen suddenly died, this feels extra poignant in the midst of the heartbreak and disbelief and wanting to argue with reality. For alongside all that, the wish that my heart breaks open into full aliveness so we may ‘meet each other in all forms of life’…

Calligraphy by Thich Nhat Hanh

my brain and
heart divorced

a decade ago

over who was

to blame about
how big of a mess
I have become

eventually,

they couldn’t be
in the same room
with each other

now my head and heart
share custody of me

stay with my brain
during the week

and my heart
gets me on weekends
they never speak to one another

– instead, they give me
the same note to pass
to each other every week

and their notes they
send to one another always
says the same thing:

“This is all your fault’

on Sundays

my heart complains
about how my

head has let me down
in the past

and on Wednesday
my head lists all
of the times my
heart has screwed
things up for me
in the future

they blame each
other for the

state of my life

there’s been a lot
of yelling – and crying

SO,
lately, I’ve been
spending a lot of

time with my gut

who serves as my
unofficial therapist

most nights, sneak out of the
window in my ribcage

and slide down my spine
and collapse on my

gut’s plush leather chair
that’s always open for me

~ and just sit sit sit sit
until the sun comes up

last evening,

my gut asked me

if was having a hard
time being caught
between my heart
and my head

nodded

said didn’t know
if could live with
either of them anymore
“my heart is always sad about

something that happened yesterday

while my head is always worried

about something that may happen tomorrow,
lamented

my gut squeezed my hand

‘just can’t live with

my mistakes of the past

or my anxiety about the future,’
sighed

my gut smiled and said:
‘in that case,

you should

go stay with your

lungs for a while,’

was confused
– the look on my face gave it away

“if you are exhausted about

your heart’s obsession with

the fixed past and your mind’s focus
on the uncertain future

your lungs are the perfect place for you

there is no yesterday in your lungs
there is no tomorrow there either

there is only now

there is only inhale

there is only exhale

there is only this moment

there is only breath
and in that breath

you can rest while your
heart and head work
their relationship out.’

this morning,
while my brain
was busy reading
tea leaves

and while my
heart was staring
at old photographs

packed a little
bag and walked
to the door of
my lungs

before could even knock
she opened the door

with a smile and as

a gust of air embraced me
she said
“what took you so long?’

by John Roedel

This poem was sent to me by kind friends no less than 3 times in the space of a couple of days, which felt like a sure sign to share it here. I appreciated its creative description of that feeling of dividedness, and the gentle resolution of simply being present with breath as a way to resting in the wholeness of this moment. When I looked up John Roedel, the author of these words, I enjoyed browsing his website as well as a series of conversations between him and God on Facebook. So many ways to land in the kind embrace of acceptance…

PS if you’d like to practice resting with the breath together, do join us at one of the free daily sits!

Image: artist unknown

by David Whyte

A few simple words from the prolific poet David Whyte, often shared on the world wide web. And in all their simplicity, the invitation to let them be true… What if this, here, now really was enough? How would that change how your breath flows in this moment, what happens to your shoulders when you open to this life as it is right now?

This weekend I came across one of the spontaneous little songs by the Bengsons, called ‘It’s enough‘. I guess it’s a theme for me this week! In that song I was struck by one line in particular: the world needs you more than she needs the things that you do. To be the human being rather than the human doing…

May we all find that space, again and again, where our doing can come from our being and where that is enough!

PS We practice touching in with that space where being is more than enough, every dat at the free daily meditations. Join us any day!

Photo by Iva Rajović on Unsplash