Posts Tagged ‘self-realization’

Growth, a spontaneous haiku/tanka @kenchawkin

April 11, 2017

Here’s a little poem that came about as I was waking up on a Saturday morning, April 1, 2017. Around 7:15 a.m. CT, I reached for my journal and started writing it down. It took about 3 minutes. I had been thinking about life and how we all go through a series of lessons, a process of self-realization, whether we know it or not, and this poem started forming itself in my mind, first as a haiku, and then extended to a tanka.

Growth
A spontaneous haiku/tanka

Whatever happens
to and by you is also
happening for you

Everything is a lesson
for you to learn and grow from

© Ken Chawkin

Related: Growth Haiku written by @kenchawkin and his son Nathanael Chawkin @integralsensei.

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Posted in My poems, Poetry | 2 Comments »

Emily Dickinson’s Solitude is Vedic Nivartatwam

August 17, 2014

Emily Dickinson beautifully, concisely describes the transcendental self-referral value of true inner solitude by realizing her unbounded Self.

There is a solitude of space
A solitude of sea
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be
Compared with that profounder site
That polar privacy
A soul admitted to itself —
Finite infinity.

When Emily admits the self to the Self, she reiterates the Vedic injunction to transcend, retire, Nivartatwam, into that infinitely silent, Shivam, infinitely peaceful, Shantam, undivided, Advaitam, fourth, Chaturtham, state of consciousness, Atma, the Self.

Emily Dickinson succinctly describes the eternal nature of Love in this short but powerful poem.

Derek Walcott had his own way of describing this return to love, to one’s Self, in Love after Love.

Read how Emily Dickinson wanted her poems to look on the page, described in Rebecca Mead’s Back of the Envelope in The New Yorker: Poesy Dept. | January 27, 2014 Issue. See Emily D.-envelope poems.

Related poem: For Emily Dickinson the brain is wider than the sky and deeper than the sea—a finite infinity.

Famous Poets and Poems lists 1779 of Emily Dickinson’s poems!

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Posted in Literature, Other poems, Poetry, Writing | 7 Comments »

A Blessing of Solitude by John O’Donohue complements Derek Walcott’s Love after Love

June 27, 2014

A Blessing of Solitude by John O’Donohue

May you recognize in your life, the presence, power and light of your soul.
May you realize that you are never alone,
That your soul in its brightness and belonging
connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe.
May you have respect for your own individuality and difference.
May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique,
that you have a special destiny here,
That behind the facade of your life
there is something beautiful, good, and eternal happening.
May you learn to see yourself with the same delight, pride,
and expectation with which God sees you in every moment.

John O’Donohue (from Anam Cara)

See Love after Love, by Derek Walcott, resonates deeply when you first acknowledge yourself.

See Emily Dickinson’s Solitude.

Other poems For a New Beginning by John O’Donohue and The Inner History of a Day by John O’Donohue.

Listen to Krista Tippett interview John O’Donohue On Being: The Inner Landscape of Beauty.

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Posted in Other poems, Poetry | 6 Comments »

Journeying god—traditional Ghanaian prayer song

March 10, 2013
journeying god
I found this beautiful traditional prayer song from Ghana, and photo, posted in the Panhala Archive. The translator is unknown.

Journeying god,
pitch your tent with mine
so that I may not become deterred
by hardship, strangeness, doubt.
Show me the movement I must make
toward a wealth not dependent on possessions,
toward a wisdom not based on books,
toward a strength not bolstered by might,
toward a god not confined to heaven.
Help me to find myself as I walk in other’s shoes.

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Posted in Other poems, Poetry | Leave a Comment »

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