I don’t know that I’ve ever read a poem that so amazingly explains what it is like to go from unconscious to conscious. I don’t know that ever read a poem that so deeply and beautifully encapsulates the arc of the spiritual awakening process until I read this one. Thanks Jackie!
For more of her poetry and poems from another student, you can click on this link:
Being Alive
Deep sea diver, she casts her net,
and yet swims down deeper below,
where the light is transfixed to go, into the darkness…into the abyss
where a seeming ominous world is really filled with goodness that is luminous
But only few have ever traveled to….
For the body and mind must be prepared, must be developed and strengthened
to see that light that blinds
and still come out the other side.
For it can break you in two if you are not ready.
It can shatter all of you,
and all of you will be left to pieces,
shambles of the self you knew.
Like Humpty Dumpty, who will pick you up?
Who will put you back together?
Only the force that made you could.
But before then, you will be left on the border
of divinity and madness, swimming through the tides
of aliveness
with your unconscious wide open
with the powers of creation and destruction at your grip
with the unseen world louder and brighter and more real
than anything else the body could see or hear.
The inner world will rage and roar like a carnival.
Up will be down, down will be up.
The flaming dragon will fling you to every side
with no remorse or restraint
only fire burning in his eyes.
Right will become wrong, wrong will make no more sense,
and blurring insanity will have filled your cup
until it is overflowing again
into a pool of illusions
with glimpses, you will see,
See so crystal clearly
for sanity will wake back up
and then you will slip back into the darkness and depths
that none around have traveled, so how can they help you climb back up?
No, no, something else must do it….
the inner Savior must come find you,
must take your hand and guide you
into the clear waters of redemption
into the good earth of your amendment
where all is balanced and retained
both the moisture from the rain
and the Sunlight’s nutrients penetrating deep
into your Soul’s enclave.
You are going to need it all.
All Nature must come alive within
and make its home in your heart.
All elements must become the family that supports and nourishes,
become the members that grow you and know you
and teach you and learn you
back in, back out….
sanity starts peaking in
reaching in to your body and mind
til you again have your sight
for this world
for that which you see
and all that you see, that cannot be seen
will become a language between secret friends
and talking and communicating and understanding
will become easy
and you will find yourself happy about this descent.
You will be happy you unraveled out and back again
and are no longer cursing the pains of the world inflicted upon you
by the ignorance of man.
You will come to see the glory that lives in all of them too
and this world will become only, yet unimaginably beautiful to you.
Everything in it….the mad, the sad, the artful and the bore
all will come to be delighted in
and find temperance and feeling for
living inside the softness which cannot be maimed
inside the glow that reflects all rays.
Yes, surely this is what all the madness was for
to get us kneeling on our hands and knees
in utter awe of all the beauty that stands before
poised with the brilliance of sobriety
that comes with the hum of a quiet mind
which melts the heart with wonder and gladness
simply at the experience of being alive.
2 Comments
Beautiful
Agreed. 🙂