It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery,
but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

by Diane Ackerman, “found poetry” from A Natural History of the Senses

What enables being alive to feel like a love affair with life? Some moments, some days can feel like that to me, but I’ve also lived moments where it’s felt more like I imagine a prison sentence might feel like, and many days where it’s something in between. So how to live more like the poet, writer and naturalist Diane Ackerman is inviting us to do?

Living as ‘variously’ as possible, evokes a sense of embracing things beyond my known comfortzone, seeking out adventures and opening up to different perspectives. And combining that with ‘grooming one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred’, it gives rise to an flavour of living life fully awake, like other poets I’ve enjoyed invite us to do. I’m thinking of  Toyohiko Kagawa when he prays to never find himself ‘yawning at life’, and Mary Oliver when she says she wants to live her life like a ‘bride to amazement’, or when Derek Wallcot urges us to ‘feast on your life’… and there are many more. And also Jim Carrey’s movie Yes Man comes to mind, where his withdrawn character tries out saying yes to everything (although he discovers that some discernment is important alongside that spirit of up-for-it-ness!).

An awareness of the nearness of death can do it too, the knowing that we have a limited time on this bright planet and with the precious people around us…

So it’s a practice! Something to remind myself of in my intentions for the day. Mindfulness and curiosity go hand in hand, so continuing to grow in mindfulness also encourages to explore the ‘savage and beautiful country’ of this life!

PS … and adventuring together is always more fun! There’s a new level 1 Mindfulness course about to start, and there’s also the Living Well to Die Well course which can inspire living to the full…

Photo by Margarida Afonso on Unsplash

Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control.

Open the door, then close it behind you.

Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel the earth gathering essences of plants to clean.

Give it back with gratitude.

If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and back.

Acknowledge this earth who has cared for you since you were a dream planting itself precisely within your parents’ desire.

Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the guardians who have known you before time, who will be there after time. They sit before the fire that has been there without time.

Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.

Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people who accompany you. Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought down upon them.

Don’t worry. The heart knows the way though there may be high-rises, interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars, and those who will despise you because they despise themselves.

The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few years, a hundred, a thousand or even more.

Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the thieves of time.

Do not hold regrets.

When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed.

You must clean yourself with cedar, sage, or other healing plant.

Cut the ties you have to failure and shame.

Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction.

Ask for forgiveness.

Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.

Call your spirit back. It may be caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.

You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.

Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.

Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.

Your spirit will need to sleep awhile after it is bathed and given clean clothes.

Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no place else to go.

Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.

Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark.

by Joy Harjo

This one needs you to know you have a little piece of undisturbed time to settle in to. Make a cup of tea, sit in your favourite chair and read this through once or a few times.

What Joy Harjo (Muscogee or Creek Nation poet and former three times poet laureate of the US, find out more here) is saying to me, is that there are many ways in which we human beings have lost our way, both culturally and individually. I feel this is true for me every day. I carry the sense that I’ve somehow lost a certain necessary something that is essential to a life lived. Is it wholesomeness, depth, presence, balance, human connection, stillness? It’s hard to put into words but I know what is getting in the way, for me at least – technology, a culture of speed and ambition, isolation, a felt disconnection from the web of life.

In my life time I’ve experienced the pre-technological era as a child and I’ve spent 6 years mostly free of technology on a retreat island. I’m now part of the crazy world of instant communication and instant getting – whether it’s information, entertainment, communication or consumables. This is a very uncomfortable passage of time to bridge. I know the real, simple, direct, open quality of a life without the huge wider world crowding

into it. I also know about the blessings of technology of course, but this poem speaks deeply of what I feel is lost to us in these ‘strange’ or ‘uncertain’ times, as they’re often referred to.

And yet it is found in moments that we can and do all experience, which sparkle through the mesh of content, proliferating perceived necessity and rushing about. I hear about these glimpse moments a lot in our mindfulness groups and I certainly witness groups falling easily back into a more tranquil and connected existence at Samye Ling on weekend retreats. This is a place where we can ‘call in a way that our spirits return’ and often by the end of the retreat there’s a sense of a joy and celebration – a tranquil version of a party perhaps!

Photo by Mike Erskine on Unsplash

a man who sees lightening

and not satori

by Matsuo Bashō

In this very short poem, we are given a piece of pith wisdom for our practice. As I understand it, it is saying – watch out for when you lose the freshness because you’ve married yourself to limiting concepts! (Satori is a Zen Buddhist word for enlightenment).

Having been practicing now for almost two decades, I know that a practice journey goes through many seasons. Some of them may be subtle and some are disruptive in all sorts of ways, but what I’ve come to understand is that it is of utmost importance that I respect what is happening. There are fertile times and arid times, times of faith and times of doubt, times of discipline and commitment and times of avoidance, times of light and movement and times of shadow and stuckness. I believe, whatever is happening in my relationship to and my experience of my practice, is a message. If I can listen to what is being communicated, I can hear the call to grow and evolve. Somewhere deep within me there’s a wisdom voice that won’t settle for a half-hearted or stagnant situation. I feel that the short poem above by the 17th century Japanese Haiku poet Basho, points towards the need for us to always open our eyes afresh to what’s actually here beyond our preconceived ideas. We might think we know what meditation is and how it’s supposed to be. We set out towards this destination, only to find we’ve lost the freshness and we’re heading for a narrower and narrower path. Consider the poignant metaphor- the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon itself.

So, what is season are you in with your practice right now? Is there a way that you can turn towards the presenting experience and ask: ‘What is important about this?’ Then give yourself time to live into the answer…

PS. If you find the wisdom in poetry beguiling, check out our popular six week Mindfulness Meets Mystical Poetry course which is running for the third time this September…

Photo by Brandon Morgan on Unsplash

From the outside the stone is a riddle:
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though a child throws it in a river;
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed
To the river bottom
Where the fishes come to knock on it
And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out
When two stones are rubbed,
So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;
Perhaps there is a moon shining
From somewhere, as though behind a hill—
Just enough light to make out
The strange writings, the star-charts
On the inner walls. 

by Charles Simic

I find this an intriguing poem by Serbian-American poet Charles Simic. Stones are so hard, physical and intractable. We think of them as unchanging, solid, constant and inanimate – and certainly not dynamic. Yet in this poem Simic plays with reimagining this absoluteness, finding a magical, light-bringing mystery in there instead. What might this be a metaphor for?

My son Sylvan is fascinated by stones because he knows they may contain treasure – fossils and crystals. He loves to crack them open to see what’s inside and is constantly on the look out for special ones. What surprise may there be inside? What possibility? I remember walking with bare-feet on the sun-warmed rocks on the northern beaches of the Holy Isle where I used to live, receiving a massage from them. There is something wonderful about stones to be appreciated over and over again!

But coming back to the question of what is the metaphor here, I’m reminded of moments when I feel intractably stuck, like my situation and accompanying feelings are solid as a weight, like a sack of stones. I can’t see the room for manoeuvre – it feels like ‘this is how it is and always will be’. But then with the help of mindfulness and compassion practice, I realise something. Although it may be subtle, it changes my seeing and feeling and I find ‘it is not dark inside after all’. Continuing to follow this lead I may discover messages, codes, clues, like the ‘strange writings and star charts on the inner walls’ of what had seemed like a rock of stubbornness, loss, anger, criticism, impossibility… The pearl of wisdom here is: Look inside these feelings, feel them, and find the hidden door in them.

What stone-like feelings might you look inside of?

Ps. If you like the beauty and metaphor in poetry and would like to find out how mindfulness can bring this alive in your own inner world come along to our Mindfulness and Mystical Poetry weekend in London in May.

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash