Love Letters

Love Letters

From our friend Charles R.

Just as a paintings and musical works have the ability to transport us from the second state to a wordless beholding, so poetry, the art of expressing in rhyme or prose, perceptions from higher centers educates our essence and communicates directly own nascent higher centers. There are the Sufi poets, Rabia, Hafiz and Rumi among others. The ancient Roman poets include Ovid, Horace, and Virgil.

A few hundred years later on the same island, Francesco Petrarca and the profound Florentine bard Dante Alighieri penned their impressions. The English poets include John Milton, William Shakespeare (often referred to as The Prince of Poets), William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Alfred Lord Tennyson.. We have the German poets; Johann Von Goethe, Rainer Maria Rilke and Friedrich Schiller; the contemporary American poets Walt Whitman (considered the most influential and innovative American poet), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and T.S. Elliot. The ancient Greeks include Sappho, Hesiod and of course, the father of epic poetry, an epic individual who gave us heroic verses, Homer.

All the above, and probably more, were seemingly able to describe life and living from higher centers. Sometimes their descriptions are allegorical, sometimes mystically abstract, and at other times incredibly direct. All were different individuals, in different vessels, living, loving and existing in different times, cultures and continents. Yet all seemed to have been enlightened and they themselves illuminating others with the same conscious light.

‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds (higher emotional and higher intellectual) admit impediments (imagination and identification’ exhorts William Shakespeare. ‘All the while it was the present only.’ says Walt Whitman. Rumi says ‘Come, come, [into the present], even if you have broken your vows [descended into imagination] a thousand times, come (be present) And as if to underscore Rumi’s advise, Rilke counsels us ‘Always be a beginner’ There are so many golden nuggets that support the golden state of presence to be found in poetry. We cannot know whether any of the above mentioned were members of an esoteric school. Although, what we can deduce from historical accounts, they seemed to have been connected to groups, fellowships, and societies that promoted conscious development.

Is there one poem that completely encompasses the effort to awaken to a conscious existence? No. Are there personal favorites that we will encounter on our journey that will sustain and continually nourish us? Of course!

A few weeks while ago helping friends with an event, my efforts led me to the following from Ovid. Read this and all the poetry that inspires you with presence.

No one’s allowed to know his fate,

Not you, not me: don’t ask, don’t hunt for answers

In tea leaves or palms.

Be patient with whatever comes.

Do what you must, be wise, cut the vine,

And forget about hope.

Time goes running, even

As we talk.

Take the present, the future’s no one’s affair.

Join the discussion

Image: Palma Vecchio, Portrait of a Poet (circa 1516, National Gallery, London)