An Excerpt from The Gospel of Mary (Oliver)

Spiritual awakening rarely happens in a straight line. It unfolds slowly—through repetition, reflection, and lived experience. In this reflection inspired by Mary Oliver’s poetry and the practice of Yoga Nidra, we explore awareness, the soul, and what it means to wake up not by knowing more, but by looking, touching, and loving what is already here.

How We Actually Learn: Not Lines, But Rotations

I've been thinking about how we learn.

Not in straight lines—though often it may appear that way—but in fractals. Circles. Rotations.

Think of a record player. From straight on, the needle looks like it's traveling in a direct line toward the center of the record, right? But what's actually happening is the record is traveling these enormous turns, rotating all the way around the needle.

Each rotation brings the needle infinitesimally closer. And over time, that tiny movement becomes significant movement.

This is how we wake up to the truth of our Being.

Not all at once but rather layer by layer—rotation by rotation. Experience by experience. We do it by coming back to the same truths, the same problems, the same practices—over and over again, but with each rotation, we get it a little deeper.

Looking for the Soul: Mary Oliver’s Bone

In my Live Online Yoga Nidra class this past Sunday, I shared one of those poems I've been circling back to for literally decades: Bone by Mary Oliver.

I call it an excerpt from the Gospel of St. Mary.

Here's how it opens:

Understand I am always trying to figure out
what the soul is
and where hidden
and what shape

Mary's looking for the soul the way most of us do—trying to figure it out. Intellectually. Practically. Where is it? What shape?

She finds an ear bone from a pilot whale on the beach. Small. Hard. Necessary. Almost nothing.

Maybe the soul is like this, she thinks. Just like the earbone, she's totally in her head.

The Moment Everything Shifts

She looks away from the bone and toward the ocean beside her:

the gray sea
opening and shutting its wave-doors
unfolding over and over
its time-ridiculing roar

That roar of the ocean, every wave crashing down, is simply the Universe over and over again saying now—now—now.

It's time-ridiculing because it's always been now. It will always be now. Time's a joke, she's saying.

And then—this is the moment—she realizes she's been looking at this all wrong:

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

From Knowing to Awareness

Lemme circle back to that again:

Our part is not knowing, but looking and touching and loving.

This is the shift from head to heart, from trying to grasp the soul like an object to revealing it through the act of awareness itself.

We don't find the soul by dissecting it. We find it by seeing what's beautiful, by touching those things we cherish, by loving the people and places and moments that make us feel most alive.

Through all the things we can be aware of, we reveal awareness itself.

This is what Yoga Nidra does.

It helps us see through the objects we are aware of—the sensations, the thoughts, the sounds, the emotions—to the awareness that's always been here.

We wake up to the truth that we are Awareness itself, experiencing itself in the form, the costume of, sensations, thoughts, sounds, emotions. As if Awareness had an entire costume box that it likes to wear: Awareness as sensation, awareness as thought, as emotion.

The Spirit Likes to Dress Up Like This

Reminds me of another excerpt from the Gospel of St. Mary, from her poem called Poem: The Spirit Likes To Dress Up Like This:

The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest…

it needs
the metaphor of the body,…

to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is—

What Mary Oliver is saying in both of these poems is that as we awaken, we do not separate from the world. We don't float above it.

Instead, our Awareness becomes intimately married to it.

Walking Softly Through the Pale Pink Morning Light

Mary ends the poem like this:

which is the way I walked on
softly
through the pale pink morning light

And just like that, she gets it now. And she's just living her life. Looking. Touching. Loving.

She's not in her head anymore. Now, she's intimately married to and awake to the miracles of the "daily presentations."

The pale pink morning light isn't just the dawn of that morning—it's the dawning of her own consciousness.

The Fractal of Returning

I've read this poem forty bajillion times.

And it took forty bajillion and one to see it this way.

That's the fractal. That's the rotation.

Each time we come back to what we love—a poem, a practice, a person—we see a little deeper. We touch a little softer. We love a little more completely.

A Practice for the Weekend

If you want the full teaching (plus the Yoga Nidra practice that followed), I've posted the video from Sunday's class here: 

It's about 17 minutes of dharma talk and 30 minutes of Yoga Nidra. Perfect for a Saturday morning when you want to go a little deeper.

Or just take Mary's words with you into your weekend:

Our part is not knowing, but looking and touching and loving.

See what you notice.
Touch what you cherish.
Love what makes you feel most alive.

That's the practice.

"Which is the way I walked on, softly, through the pale pink morning light…"

FAQ

What is the spiritual meaning of Mary Oliver’s poem Bone?
The poem explores the shift from intellectual understanding to embodied awareness. It suggests the soul isn’t something to define, but something revealed through presence, love, and attention.

How does Yoga Nidra support spiritual awakening?
Yoga Nidra guides awareness beyond thoughts and sensations, helping practitioners recognize awareness itself—the ground of experience—without effort or analysis.

What does “our part is not knowing” mean?
It points to a form of wisdom rooted in lived experience rather than conceptual knowledge. Awakening happens through relationship, not mastery.

How does mindfulness relate to poetry and meditation?
Poetry and meditation both train attention. They invite direct experience rather than explanation, allowing insight to emerge naturally.

To The Brim My Heart Was Full

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Photo: By Diliff - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7174148

Do you remember learning about William Wordsworth in your high school English class? He was a big deal among the British Romantic poets, lived late 18th/early 19th century, was Britain’s poet laureate for a spell, and was the kind of poet that other poets write poems about. (By the way, in case you were wondering, this is what an English major ends up doing for a living—teaching yoga, writing about it ad nauseam, and making endless references to poetry and poets and how they are all basically pointing to the same thing—presence.)

So, as a child, Wordsworth and his siblings were basically orphaned. Though relatives became reluctant guardians, from an early age William had enormous pressure on him to choose a respectable career which would enable him to move out and support himself and his sister, Dorothy. William was incredibly close to Dorothy, who was of a social class that simply wouldn’t allow her to work.
 

His guardians expected William to become a vicar for the Church of England, a respectable career, but one for which Wordsworth had no love. William’s love was poetry, but to his guardians, poetry was the career-equivalent of homelessness.

As a young man, one early-summer’s morning, Wordsworth was walking across the meadows and heathlands toward his home at Hawkshead, no doubt burdened by the tension between following his passion of poetry and taking a job doing what others expected him to do.

As he walked, the sun began to rise and light up his senses with a splendor of the majestic landscape, also brightening and dissolving his dark and heavy worries. Soon, he was brimming with joy, drunk with the dawning light on the meadows, the dew and vapors on the heath, and a vision of the “sea laughing at a distance.” He speaks to this magical moment in perhaps his finest and most enduring poem, Prelude, in which he says,

     Ah! need I say, dear Friend! that to the brim
     My heart was full . . .

And then, with his heart brimming, with his senses thrumming, the dawning light of the morning began to work a miracle on his heart by illuminating it to the sure and deep knowing of its gift for the world as a poet. It’s as if God, the Cosmos, or Creation—whatever—spoke and made promises to him that he must follow poetry, must offer it as a gift to the world, and that it would all work out.

Check it out. In the same poem he says,

     . . . I made no vows, but vows
     Were then made for me; bond unknown to me
     Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,
     A dedicated Spirit. On I walked
     In thankful blessedness, which yet survives.

 

Boom! Drop the mic. Walk off stage.

 

And from that moment forward, with such clarity, joy, and peace in his heart, Wiliam never doubted his purpose again.

And speaking of the Church, with this sure knowledge of his heart’s gift to the world as a poet, Wordsworth felt he would be sinning greatly against an even higher power than the Church if he didn’t honor the vow which was so clearly made to his heart.

Spoiler: being a poet worked out great for Wordsworth. Actually, more than great because Wordsworth devoted himself to poetry and set up a house for himself and his sister where they could immerse themselves in the craft of poetry. Dorothy was also a poet and this setup gave her the freedom to write. William and Dorothy were a poetry tour de force as they lived a life of all things poetry. They would discuss, analyze, and workshop poems and upon completion, Dorothy would pen them in her immaculate handwriting.

Perhaps most importantly to William, his sister Dorothy was his purest love, his North Star, and his muse. If he would have relented to a career in the Church, he would have been exiled from his two loves, Dorothy and poetry.

 

Ultimately, my point here is that with presence you too can hear (or have heard) the vows that the world is making to your heart about your gift to the world. It may not be as public or as grandiose as William Wordsworth’s but regardless, is nonetheless just as important, the world needs it just as much, and it is your own private marriage to the world.

I always say that poets are yogis with a pen, or yogis are poets with poses. In both disciplines, one comes to know themselves, their True Nature, by practicing regular and abiding presence. Whether poet or plumber, it takes a fierce presence in conversation with that thing that is larger than all of us, but to which all play an integral part, in order to do any good work in this world.
 

This week, I invite you to practice listening. Go to a yoga class. Sit and meditate. Go on a walk and leave your phone at home. Open up to creation by drinking in your senses, a profound and delicious way of practicing presence. Listen and hear the world speak to your heart. Allow your heart to speak to your mind.

I also invite you to join me for my next Yoga Nidra course: Sourcing Your Heart’s Gift, a supportive practice that regularly takes you deep inside to hear and develop your heart’s gift for the world.

This is the last week to register!

Namaste,

Scott

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Sourcing Your Heart's Gift: an online meditation and yoga course designed to help you to dive deep into your heart to discover and develop your purpose and courageously share it with the world.

February 12–March 25 2018