Rest in the Breath - David Whyte

Rest is the conversation between what we love to do and
how we love to be.  To rest is to give up on the already
exhausted will as the prime motivator of endeavor, with its
endless outward need to reward itself through established goals.
To rest is to give up on worrying and fretting and the sense that
there is something wrong with the world unless we are there to
put it right; to rest is to fall back literally and figuratively from
outer targets, and shift.....to an inner state of natural exchange.

The template of natural exchange is the breath, the autonomic
giving and receiving that forms the basis and the measure of
life itself.  We are rested when we are living [that] exchange...

In rest is the sense of stopping, of giving up on what we've been
doing or how we have been being.  It is the sense of slowly coming
home...

Deep in the primal exchange of the breath, is the give and take,
the blessing and the being blessed and the ability to delight
in both.  In rest there is a sense of presence, a delight in and
anticipation of the world and all of its forms [in which]
receiving and responding occur in one spontaneous movement.

A deep experience of rest is a perspective from which we are
able to perceive the outer specific forms of our work [and life]
and our relationships whilst being nourished by the shared
foundational gift of the breath itself.

Rested, we are ready for the world,
but not held hostage by it...

David Whyte

Excerpts from a writing called "Rest"
From the book: CONSOLATIONS

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Break For Freedom - David Whyte

To remove ourselves entirely and absolutely, abruptly and
at times uncompromisingly is often the real and radically
courageous break for freedom.  Unsticking ourselves from
the mythical Tar Baby, seemingly set up, just for us, right
in the middle of our path, we start the process of losing
our sense of falsity, of ridding ourselves of illusions, of
letting go of our self-manufactured enemies, and even our
false friends, and most especially the false sense of self
we have manufactured to live with them.  We make
ourselves available for the simple seeing of ourselves
and our world more elementally and therefore more clearly
again.  We withdraw, not to disappear, but to find another
ground from which to see; a solid ground from which to
step, and from which to speak again, in a different way, a
clear, rested, embodied voice we begin to remember as our own.

David Whyte
Excerpt from an essay - "Withdrawal"

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

"Ways of Seeing" - Interview with David Whyte

...I recognized in my Zen meditation moments of inhabiting
a greater identity.  The real discipline is to remain in that
greater identity and to sustain that sense of presence - so that
you see the essence of [things] that affects you very deeply when
you allow yourself to watch and deepen that attention...

What is asked of human beings on a daily basis, is to get out
of ourselves by paying attention to things other than ourselves.
To see in a way which is other than the way we have used to
name the world, other than the way we have been taught to see
the world, and then as a result have ourselves be seen by the world.

As in all great contemplative traditions, the  most nourishing thing
you can do is pay attention to [you immediate environment], but
it will also break your life apart, because the fixed identity that
had named the world and wanted it to be a certain way, in order
to prevent us from experiencing heartbreak, is found to be too
small.  To name/label is a smaller way of seeing.

Our way of staying safe is to assign names to what in fact cannot
be named.  It is the precise reason why poetry is so difficult to
write.  Because you're actually going to a part of you that doesn't
know what to say.  ...you are going to a part of you that radically
doesn't know and you are going to pay attention and observe 
from that place.  Then at that meeting place between what you
think is you and what you think is not you, that is where the
conversation happens.  And when you speak that conversation
out loud it comes out as poetry.  It is the same undoing of your
surface personality...

Interviewer: So how does one perceive the essence of things?

...listening is a deep form of looking...  I am looking at something
to see what it is saying to me, without imposing a voice upon it.

The implication of truly seeing is that the rest of the world must 
be perceiving the miraculous in you.  Which is quite humbling.
The only place to hold that sense of miraculousness without ego
is in silence...

Perhaps once you have established a relationship with silence,
with deep seeing and listening, then you can live in a way in
which you are not harmed by constant contraction [from noise
and chaos].  There is a reason why monasteries are quiet places.
There is a reason why artists go to quiet places, even when it is
just a quiet room to create.

Excerpts from "Ways of Seeing" - Interview with
David Whyte
by Judith van Leeuwen
From See All This
Sept 2022
with thanks to Kim Manley Ort

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Break Into Freedom - David Whyte

To remove ourselves entirely and absolutely, abruptly and
at times uncompromisingly is often the real and radically
courageous break for freedom.

Unsticking ourselves from the mythical Tar Baby, seemingly
 set up, just for us, right in the middle of our path, we start
the process of losing our sense of falsity, of ridding ourselves
of illusions, of letting go of our self-manufactured enemies,
and even our false friends, and most especially the false 
sense of self we have manufactured to live with them.  We
make ourselves available for the simple seeing of ourselves
and our world more elementally and therefore more clearly
again.  We withdraw, not to disappear, but to find another
ground from which to see; a solid ground from which to step,
and from which to speak again, in a different way, a clear,
rested, embodied voice we begin to remember as our own.

David Whyte
Excerpt from an essay - "Withdrawal"

~

Inside this new love, die...
Your way begins on the other side.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone born into color.
Do it now...

Rumi

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

What I Must Tell Myself - David Whyte

[.....]

I have only this breath
and this presence
for my wings
and they carry me
in my body
whatever I do
from one hushed moment
to another.

I know my innocence
and I know my unknowing
but for all my successes
I go through life
like a blind child
who cannot see,
arms outstretched
trying to put together
a world.

[.....]

Watching the geese
go south I find
that
even in silence
and
even in my home
alone
without a thought
or a movement
I am part
of a great migration
that will take me to another place.

[.....]

When one things dies all things
die together, and must live again
in a different way,
when one thing
is missing everything is missing,
and must be found again
in a new whole
and everything wants to be complete,
everything wants to go home
and the geese travelling south
are like the shadow of my breath
flying into the darkness
on great heart-beats
to an unknown land where I belong.

David Whyte
Excerpts from - "What I Must Tell Myself"
From: The House of Belonging

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Edge You Carry With You - David Whyte

You know
so very well
the edge
of darkness
you have
always
carried with you.
You know
so very well,
your childhood legacy:
that particular,
inherited

sense of hurt,
given to you
so freely
by the world
you entered.
And you know
too well
by now
the body's
hesitation
at the invitation
to undo
everything
others seemed
to want to
make you learn.
But your edge
of darkness
has always
made
its own definition
secretly
as an edge of light
and the door
you closed
might,
by its very nature
be
one just waiting
to be leant against
and opened.

And happiness
might just
be a single step away,
on the other side
of that next
unhelpful
and undeserving
thought.
Your way home,
understood now,
not as an achievement,
but as a giving up,
a blessed undoing,
an arrival
in the body
and a full rest
in the give
and take
of the breath.
This living
breathing body
always waiting
to greet you
at the door,
always prepared 
to give you
the rest you need,
always,
no matter
the long
years away,
still
wanting you,
to come home.

David Whyte
From: "The Edge You Carry With You"
in 'Still Possible"

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Create Silence - David Whyte

 The object in meditation and all of our contemplative
disciplines is silence.  But...  that silence is in order for
you to perceive something other than yourself -
what you've arranged as yourself to actually perceive
this frontier between what you call your self and what you
call other than your self,  whether that's a person or a landscape.

One of the greatest arts of poetry is actually to create silence
through attentive speech - speech that says something in
such a way that it appears as a third frontier between you and
the world, and invites you into a deeper and more generous
sense of your own identity and the identity of the world...

Poetry is the verbal art-form by which we can actually create
silence...

Silence is frightening, an intimation of the end, the graveyard
of fixed identities.  Real silence puts any present understanding
to shame; orphans us from certainty; leads us beyond the
well-known and accepted reality and confronts us with the
unknown and previously unacceptable conversation about
to break in upon our lives.

In silence, Essence speaks to us of Essence itself and asks
for a kind of unilateral disarmament, our own essential
nature slowly emerging as the defended periphery
atomizes and falls apart.

As the busy edge dissolves we begin to join the conversation
through the portal of a present unknowing, robust vulnerability,
revealing in the way we listen, a different ear, a more perceptive
eye, an imagination refusing to come too early to a conclusion,
and belonging to a different person than the one who first
entered the quiet.

David Whyte
Poet
from - Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and
Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

Photo by Aaron Burden

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

Vulnerability - David Whyte

Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or
something we can arrange to do without.  Vulnerability is not a
 choice, vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding
undercurrent of our natural state.  To run from vulnerability is to
run from the essence of our nature.  The attempt to be invulnerable
is the vain attempt to become something we are not and most
especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others.
More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability we refuse the help
needed at every turn of our existence.

To have a temporary, or isolated sense of power over all events
and circumstances is a lovely illusionary privilege and perhaps
the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human
and especially of being a youthful human, but it is a privilege that
must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, with
loss of loved ones who do not share our untouchable powers;
powers eventually and most emphatically given up, as we
approach our last breath.

The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our
vulnerability, how we become more courageous and  more
compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance.

Our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of
loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers,
reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of Existence, but never
walking fully through the door...

David Whyte

Excerpt from
Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying
Meaning of Everyday Words

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Santiago - David Whyte

The road seen, then not seen, the hillside
hiding then revealing the way you should take,
the road dropping away from you as if leaving you
to walk on thin air, then catching you, holding you up,
when you thought you would fall,
and the way forward always in the end
the way that you followed, the way that carried you
into your future, that brought you to this place,

no matter that it sometimes took your promise from you,
no matter that it had to break your heart along the way;
the sense of having walked from far inside yourself
out into the revelation, to have risked yourself
for something that seemed to stand both inside you
and far beyond you, that called you back
to the only road in the end you could follow, walking
as you did, in your rags of love and speaking in the voice
that by night became a prayer for safe arrival,
so that one day you realized that what you wanted
had already happened long ago and in the dwelling place
you had lived in before you began,
and that every step along the way, you had carried
the heart and mind and the promise
that first set you off and drew you on and that you were
more marvelous in your simple wish to find a way
than the gilded roofs of any destination you could reach:
as if, all along, you had thought the end point might be a city
with golden towers, and cheering crowds,
and turning the corner at what you thought was the end
of the road, you found just a simple reflection,
and a clear revelation beneath the face looking back
and beneath it another invitation, all in one glimpse:
like a person and a place you had sought forever,
like a broad field of freedom that beckoned you beyond;
like another life, and the road still stretching on.

David Whyte
From Pilgrim

via No Mind's Land

~

Photo from In The Garden of the Beloved Facebook

Farewell Letter - David Whyte

She wrote me a letter
after her death
and I remember
a kind of happy light
falling on the envelope
as I sat by the rose tree
on her old bench
at the back door,
so surprised by its arrival
wondering what she would say,
looking up before I could open it
and laughing to myself
in silent expectation.

Dear son, it is time
for me to leave you.

I am afraid that the words
you are used to hearing
are no longer mine to give.
They are gone and mingled
back in the world
where it is no longer
in my power
to be their first
original author
not their last loving bearer.
You can hear
motherly affection now
only from your own mouth
and only
when you speak them
to those
who stand
motherless
before you.

As for me I must forsake
adulthood
and be bound gladly
to a new childhood.
You must understand
this apprenticeship
demands of me
an elemental innocence
from everything
I ever held in my hands.

I know your generous soul
is well able to let me go...

[.....]

I find myself
after loving you all so long,
in the wide
infinite mercy
of being mothered myself.


P.S. All your intuitions are true.

David Whyte

Thank you to - The Beauty We Love

Waking up to your Aliveness - Elizabeth Gilbert

Creativity is the relationship between a human being and the
mysteries of inspiration...

We are all capable of brushing up against a sense of mystery and
inspiration.  We may be able to draw nearer to that source than we
think, being gently propelled by some force, something not "me."

"Creative living" is living a life that is driven more strongly by
curiosity than be fear. [But] you won't be able to create anything
interesting out of your life if you don't believe in "creative
entitlement."  This doesn't mean behaving like a princess, or acting
as though the world owes you anything.  "Creative entitlement"
simply means believing that you are allowed to be here, and that
merely by being here, you are allowed to have a voice, and a vision
of your own.

The poet David Whyte calls this sense of creative entitlement "the
arrogance of belonging", and claims that it is absolutely vital
to cultivate if you wish to interact more vividly with life.
Without this "arrogance of belonging", you will never be able to take
any creative risks, without it, you will never push yourself out of the
suffocating insulation of personal safety and into the frontiers of the
beautiful and the unexpected.

The "arrogance of belonging" is not about egotism or self-absorption.
In a strange way it is a divine force that will actually take you out of
yourself and allow you to engage more fully with life.  Because often
what keeps you from "creative living" is your self-absorption, i.e.
your self-doubt, your self-disgust, your self-judgment, your crushing
sense of self-protection.  The "arrogance of belonging" pulls you out
of the the darkest depths of self-hatred, not by saying "I am the
greatest!" but merely saying "I am here" -
the simple entitlement to exist and
express yourself.

Your soul will mobilize accordingly.  It will mobilize ecstatically,
because this is what your Soul [Being] was born for.  Your Soul
has been waiting for you to wake up to your own existence
[your Aliveness] for years. 
[Being wants to express ItSelf through you in creative ways.]

Elizabeth Gilbert
Author of Eat Pray Love

above excerpt from: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear 

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - leaves on grass,
color digitally inverted

Vulnerability - David Whyte

Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or
something we can arrange to do without.  Vulnerability is not a
choice, vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding
undercurrent of our natural state.  To run from vulnerability is to
run from the essence of our nature.  The attempt to be invulnerable
is the vain attempt to become something we are not and most
especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others.
More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability we refuse the help
needed at every turn of our existence.

To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events
and circumstances is a lovely illussionary privilege and perhaps
the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human
and especially of being youthful human, but it is a privilege that
must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, with
loss of loved ones who do not share our untouchable powers;
powers eventually and most emphatically given up, as we
approach our last breath.

The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our
vulnerability, how we become more courageous and more
compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance.
Our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of
 loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers,
reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never
walking fully through the door...


David Whyte

Excerpt from
Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying
Meaning of Everyday Words

Rest - David Whyte

Rest is the conversation between what we love to do
and how we love to be.
To rest is to give up on the already exhausted will
as the prime motivator of endeavor, with its endless
outward need to reward itself through established goals.
To rest is to give up on worrying and fretting and the sense
that there is something wrong with the world
unless we are there to put it right;
to rest is to fall back literally or figuratively from outer targets,
and shift.....to an inner state of natural exchange.

The template of natural exchange is the breath,
the autonomic giving and receiving
that forms the basis and the measure for life itself.

We are rested when we are living [that] exchange...

In rest is the sense of stopping, of giving up on
what we've been doing or how we have been being.
It is the sense of slowly coming home...

Deep in the primal exchange of the breath,
is the give and take, the blessing and the being blessed
and the ability to delight in both.
In rest there is a sense of presence, a delight in and
anticipation of the world and all of its forms [in which]
receiving and responding occur in one spontaneous movement.

A deep experience of rest is a perspective from which we are
able to perceive the outer specific forms of our work [and life]
and our relationships whilst being nourished by the shared
foundational gift of the breath itself.

Rested, we are ready for the world,
but not held hostage by it...

David Whyte

Excerpts from a writing called "Rest"
From the book: CONSOLATIONS

(David's words, my format)

Note: In Non-Duality religions they would call this Resting in Awareness...  One could also say it is resting in the Primal Rest of Pure Being, although am not sure that is David's meaning - but is how I interpret his words...   

Break for Freedom - David Whyte & Rumi

To remove ourselves entirely and absolutely,
abruptly and at times uncompromisingly is often
the real and radically courageous
break for freedom.
Unsticking ourselves from the mythical
Tar Baby, seemingly set up, just for us,
right in the middle of our path,
we start the process of losing our sense of falsity,
of ridding ourselves of illusions,
of letting go of our self-manufactured enemies,
and even our false friends,
and most especially the false sense of self
we have manufactured to live with them.

We make ourselves available for the simple seeing of ourselves
and our world more elementally and therefore more clearly again.
We withdraw, not to disappear, but to find another ground
from which to see; a solid ground from which to step,
 and from which to speak again, in a different way,
 a clear, rested, embodied voice we begin to remember
as our own...

David Whyte
Excerpt from an essay -"Withdrawal"

Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
Slide out the side.
Die, and be quiet.
Quietness is the surest sign that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running from Silence.

Rumi
"Become the Sky"

~

Top Photo - Ceiling Abstract
taken looking up where several ceiling levels
come together, also a ceiling beam, and a rod
with a hanger on it :)  Color inverted.

Bottom photo - Through the glass of a greenhouse ceiling. 

Upon Waking - David Whyte

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.....

To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world
in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of
the morning window
toward the presence of everything that can be,
what urgency calls you to your one love?

[.....]

David Whyte
Excerpt from:
"What to Remember When Waking"

~*~

Photo - A sheer window curtain

Listening and Remembering - David Whyte

“In the first hardly noticed moment
in which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
and honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening
into the day
which closes
the moment
you begin your plans…

What you can plan
is too small
for you to live…

To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others…

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

Now,

 looking through
the slanting light
of the morning window
toward the presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to
your
one
love?

~

All those years
forgetting
how everything
has its own voice
to make
itself
 heard.

All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
by
simply
listening

And the slow
remembering

~
~
~

[that]

What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.

[that]

Inside everyone
is a great shout
of joy
waiting
to
be
born

So let this winter
of listening
be enough
for the
new
life”

~

David Whyte

~

Excerpts from: “What to Remember When Waking”
and
”The Winter of Listening”

by David Whyte

From: The House of Belonging

The Awareness and Joy Of Being...

“Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born…”

David Whyte
From: The Winter of Listening
The House of Belonging

Open awareness
changes us…

There is magic in deep listening,
in open awareness,
in Silence.
There is a subtle
but utterly reorienting shift
of perspective…
One finds oneself, locates oneself
as Here and Now and This.

It is only in those times of
deep listening, awareness
and Silence
that I know who I really am.

This Silence,
this deep listening,
is what we have been
looking for,
for a long, long time.

Remembering the stillness
at the heart
of our own lives
reunites us with
everything…

The Natural Contemplative

“To be awake is to be
unconditionally
open
to all that is.
To stay awake
is to surrender
totally
to unedited
and
unrestricted
awareness…”

Scott Morrison
Daily Dharma

When you become
very open and relaxed,
you can suddenly
be aware that
something else
is occupying
your body-mind.

Something else
is looking out from
your eyes,
listening from
your ears,
and feeling
your feelings.

Awakeness is inherent
in all things
and all beings
everywhere,
all the time…

You realize that behind
all your desires
was a single desire:
to experience
each moment
from your
true nature…

Adyashanti

Twilight Moon...

Stand still.
The trees ahead and bushes beside you
are not lost.
Wherever you are is called Here…

…The forest breathes.
Listen.
It answers…

I have made this place around you.
If you leave it,
you may come back again,
saying Here…

Stand still.
The forest knows where you are.
You must let it find you…


David Wagoner
Excerpt From: “Lost”
To read the complete poem click here

I walk the maze of moments,
and everywhere I turn to
begins a new beginning
and never finds a finish.

I walk to the horizon,
and there I find another.
It all seems so surprising,
and then I find I know –

Anywhere Is…

Enya
Lyrics from: Anywhere Is

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone…

…To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy
of your surroundings.

Surely…you have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence…crowding out your solo voice…

Put down the weight of your aloneness…
The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink,
the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness
and seen the good in you at last.
All birds and creatures of the world
are unutterably themselves.

Everything is waiting for you…


David Whyte
Excerpt From: Everything Is Waiting For You…
To read the complete poem click here

“At some point there has to be a direct apprehension.
It’s about a visceral taste of this living event…

This is what “being in the Now” is all about.
When the focus on thought stories subsides,
the living happening reveals itself.
There’s just a happening happening -
shifting modulations of a great event.

Clear seeing…..simply reveals what is always
already the case.
It soon dawns that whatever is occurring
in whatever state
is nothing other than a modulation of Life’s creative play.”


Radical Tao