I wrote this poem, The Enlightened Heart, in the late 1980s, over 25 years ago. I had begun writing a lot of poetry back then. A few years later, in the early 90’s, I recited it at a World Peace Assembly in Maharishi University’s Golden Dome. I was asked to read two poems that day; the first one was Seeing Is Being. It took a lot of courage to ask to read my poems in front of a few hundred people, but I wanted it to be a birthday present to myself. I was glad to have been invited. The poetry reading produced a wonderful effect within me and the audience.
The Enlightened Heart
There is a sea of love flowing within my heart; each drop contains a world, a wave of feeling, rolling out to a not-too-distant shore.
You are dwelling there upon that shore, warming under the sun above.
When you dive deep inside this sea, you stir the me, that’s becoming the we, and melt the three into a unity, that remembers its own eternity;
in the eternally-flowing sea of love.
Many years later Sheila Moschen asked me to read this poem on her KHOE Radio program, Let Your Heart Sing. It concluded Radio Show #72: “Love Songs 1” at 28:28. Sheila would also later ask me to read 3 of my love poems for her Valentine’s Day Show.
Some poems you might like from that earlier era are: Ode To The Artist, and its companion piece Sometimes Poetry Happens. Also see As Above, So Below and a complementary poem, Pine Cone Trees, written several years later while living in Houston, Texas. This poem, Being in Nature, was written after I had returned to Canada to live in Vancouver, British Columbia. After returning to the US, I wrote this poem, Poetry – The Art of the Voice, while living in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Boone, North Carolina. It beautifully expresses the feeling that was created in the dome. You can see more of My poems on The Uncarved Blog.
Love—is anterior to Life—
Posterior—to Death—
Initial of Creation, and
The Exponent of Breath—
This description of Love reminds me of the nature of the Self described in chapter two of the Gita: It is eternal. It was never born, nor will it ever die. It cannot be destroyed when the body is destroyed.
When it comes to mystical conception and creative inspiration, Love is expressed in a beautiful poem by New York poet laureate Marie Howe. Listen to her read Annunciation to Krista Tippett On Being.
For another Vedic perspective from America’s greatest poet, see Emily Dickinson’s Solitude, where she describes the self-referral process of the self integrating with the Self, finite infinity.
Rumi and Octavio Paz on Discovering a more Cosmic Perspective
Rumi
I am so small I can barely be seen.
How can this great love be inside me?
Look at your eyes. They are small, but they see enormous things.
(The Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks)
~
Octavio Paz
Brotherhood
Homage to Claudius Ptolemy
I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.
(Collected Poems by Octavio Paz, translated with Eliot Weinberger)
An even more cosmic understanding our relationship to the universe comes from the Vedic Literature — “Yatha pinde tatha brahmande, yatha brahmande tatha pinde” — “As is the individual, so is the universe, as is the universe, so is the individual” or “As is the atom, so is the Universe” or “As is the human body, so is the Cosmic Body” or “As is the Microcosm, so is the Macrocosm”, or succinctly as “As Above, So Below.” See my poem As Above So Below.
Another expression is “Anor aniyan mahato mahiyan“ — “Smaller than the smallest is larger than the largest” i.e., our essential nature, our Self, is beyond measure, infinite, unbounded, transcendental.
Susan Glassmeyer is the co-director of the Holistic Health Center of Cincinnati and has a private practice as a somatic therapist, specializing in the Feldenkrais Method®. She recently won a grant through Xavier University (Cincinnati) to complete work on a chapbook titled “Body Matters.” She promotes local writing classes, workshops, and activities through her website www.LittlePocketPoetry.Org.
On April 16, 2018, Susan Glassmeyer published Invisible Fish, a collection of new and previously published selected poems. In March 2019, I purchased a signed copy directly from Susan. So glad I did.
Visit the new website of this Ohio Poet of the Year 2018.
The Uncarved Blog 