There are many ways to say, "You are a magnificent, powerful being, immersed in unconditional love." Hearing that message is another matter. Poetry has a way of uncovering that hidden path to understanding. A path covered by time's accumulation of leaves and twigs and vines hanging from the mature trees of your life experience. A path whose presence, made known, leads you not only to a place of understanding, but to a place of knowing.
As you absorb David Whyte's beautiful words of commonplace giving rise to this insight, give yourself permission to follow that path. Follow it to that place where his prose can join the chorus of truths your soul already knows. Sit quietly. Listen. Feel the resonance and soak up the melody. Then, when you're ready, filled with this knowing, carry it back along that same path. Re-emerge in your world humming this tune that you are not alone. You are well cared for. You are loved unconditionally. And that everything is waiting for you.
Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. 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 the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
David Whyte
from Everything is Waiting for You
©2003 Many Rivers Press