I hope you’re doing great today. My next live Yoga Nidra teacher trainings aren’t for a while, though you can always download my online Yoga Nidra training, which I think is the best online Yoga Nidra teacher training ever, here. Today, I thought I’d discuss a little about yoga and poetry and how they work so well together. As always, you can download your free Yoga Nidra script and get a free Yoga Nidra recording by clicking the image on the right.
When I was running on a trail early this morning, I hear this Rilke poem translated and read by Joanna Macy which totally lit me up:
Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower
Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.
Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29
Goddamn!
This poem reminds me that poetry is another yogic practice in both simple and profound ways. Right off the bat, this poem reminded me of that simple but profound practice of noticing our breath and the familiar exile of darkness we all go through at times.
The image of the bell ringing clear in the darkness shone brightly in my mind.
“What batters you becomes your strength.” I immediately thought of how the tongue of the bell striking it is what makes it sing. If you know me, you know that sooner or later, all roads lead to Leonard Cohen and there’s no way that this bell motif could pass without quoting his song “Anthem” (unapologetically, not the first reference, not the last).
Ring the bells that still can ring,
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in.
Both Rilke and Cohen understand that a broken bell is still a bell but more profoundly, the cracks are our catalyst for illumination.
The theme of the crossroads looms large in my spirit and heart so it’s no wonder that these lines hit me between the eyes:
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
“Be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses, the meaning discovered there!” So rich, I need a glass of milk to wash this down. It ties into the last stanza beautifully.
Rilke sends us off with this profoundly illuminating last stanza, his words alchemizing disparate realms to illuminate the magic that lives at the crossroads:
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.
Whenever we feel lost to the world, feel stuck in the darkness of our soul, the darkness of our times, or profoundly unsure of where to go in life, perhaps our most powerful resource is to simply assert the truth who we are—we are the lovechild of the Universe.
In yoga, Shiva represents our inert and immutable spiritual Beingness. His mantra is, “I am.” Shakti represents our fluid and fallible human nature. Her mantra is, “I flow.” I interpret this poem as Shiva represented by the silent earth and Shakti represented by the rushing water. So by saying to the earth “I flow” and the river “I am,” it’s like whispering into the ears of Shiva and Shakti, their respective lover’s mantra. Whispering the essence of one into the ear of the other is an intimate act of lovemaking, a consummation that gestates and births a miraculous new, third thing—us. We are the lovechild of the Universe with humanness as our mother and Beingness as our father. We are the miracle that is human being.
Before dropping the mic and walking away from this poem, Rilke reminds us that our greatest power rests in understanding the truth of who we are. This is the “meaning discovered at the crossroads of our senses.”
There’s magic at the crossroads. Certainly the magic that Rilke found at the crossroads—crossroads of life, loneliness, globalization, and the emergence of the 20th century—was poetry, a prophetic voice that resonates even 100 years later for some salty yoga teacher running on a trail, damn near in tears.
As I was running this morning—and it was such a beautiful run, the fresh morning hinting at autumn, recent rain lifting a scented bouquet of the earth, leaves, and late-summer flowers—I asked myself, “Why poetry? Why is it so profound for me?”
I mean, sure, I studied poetry in college but poetry didn’t really stick for me then (early 2000s). College may have been when the seed of poetry may have been planted in me but it definitely needed to gestate for many more years before it could truly be born in my heart. Maybe I hadn’t lived enough life yet to understand it. Maybe I was intellectualizing it, still trying too hard to analyze it so I could write a paper about it that might get a good grade. Maybe my heart wasn’t developed enough to feel it.
Now, I realize that to write good poetry requires an incredible ability of presence and awareness, everything we practice in yoga and meditation. As I was running and listening to Rilke’s poetry this morning, I felt the familiar sensation of being at the crossroads of realms. By this I mean the crossroads of body, mind, and spirit, this practical, human world mingling with some more mysterious but nonetheless real world of Being or spirit. Yoga, Yoga Nidra, meditation, plant medicine, and sacred ceremony have all been potent illuminators in my life to open my heart and feel spirit and to “play at the edges of knowing” this magical crossroads (to quote Mary Oliver).
Again, there is magic at the crossroads.
Poetry is so potent for me because just like yoga or Yoga Nidra or working with a shaman in the mountains of Columbia, it’s a guide to the mysterious crossroads of human and Being, the blend of realms. Truly, this crossroads of realms, this place of human and being, is unfailingly ineffable and can never be accurately articulated unless, again like Mary Oliver says …
lest we would sift it down
into fractions, and facts
certainties
and what the soul is, also
I believe I will never quite know.
Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,
but looking, and touching, and loving,
which is the way I walked on,
softly,
through the pale-pink morning light.
(Mary Oliver from her poem “Bone”)
This poem, “Bone,” is Mary Oliver describing an awakening moment for her as she walks into the sunrise one morning. I suppose I had my own sunrise moment this morning, running into the light along desert mountain trails, listening to Rilke.
Clearly, I am still analyzing poetry. At least now I do so from the perspective of learning to understand the mystery of being human rather than vying for a grade. It baffles me that what will take me an entire career to discover and express, Rilke can do in one short poem. That’s some magic, there!
The magic in this poem by Rilke, as well as poetry in general, is the act of marrying our human with our Being through witnessing and words. Yoga means union so in a way, poetry is a yogic practice.
Whether by yoga poses or yoga poems, may we all learn to be the mystery at the crossroads of our senses.