Tonight, Rilke

Wicker Weaving, "Lotus" by Chaa

I found this poem tonight for the first time. I felt it at once, but not in a way I could describe. So I closed the book and took to writing a blog entry filled with the ill-matched threads of my currently frayed emotions. But that was not something I wanted to send out into the world. Too much personal angst. Just because one needs to vomit doesn't mean others want to watch or smell it. (Unfortunately, sometimes friends get it anyway, when they least expect it.) So after that purge, I am coming back to the poem to see what is there for me. I have no idea where this is leading, or if it will have anything to do with my mood today.


She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
of her life, and weaves them gracefully
into a single cloth--
its she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration

where the one guest is you.
In the softness of evening
it's you she receives.

You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeaking center of her monologues.
With each disclosure you encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,
to hold you.

~Rainer Maria Rilke, from Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God,
translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

First question, who is "she"? The feminine God? The Self? Soul? (I will use all these words to refer to the mystery in the poem, not because I think they mean the same thing, but because I don't want to pin "her" down.) I see her sorting through what has been lost, discarded, rejected from the psyche, making good use of each thread as she weaves a unified whole. Her weaving is like a meditative state that banishes the incessant fears and worries of the mind--the loudmouths of the hall. She then receives "you"--and who are you? Who are you to her?  Human to God? Ego to Self? Body/Mind to Soul?

"You are the partner of her loneliness".

Ah, this is the heart of it...even SHE feels lonely, and your presence does not erase that loneliness, though you share it with her. This reminds me of a statment of Rilke's from Letters on Love,  "I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other."  Is the poem saying that even God is lonely? (Yes, actually, he says that a lot...probably because he was very lonely.)

The last lines hold the key to something bigger though.

"With each disclosure you encompass more"--the human mind/ego/psyche is enlarged by witnessing her as she reveals herself. This we know, listening to the small, still voice within, the voice that is able to maintain composure and silence and softness when everything outside is filled with chaos and despair, does bring a greater sense of well being, a greater ability to encompass all with equanimity (or something approaching that...)  And, as the you in the poem grows, "she stretches beyond what limits her, to hold you"; so this is how God/Self/Soul grows and...dare I say...evolves? By being seen and heard by YOU...the small, 'insignificant' human self, willing to be a part of the conversation. 

Rilke makes this point at the end of another poem, "...inside human beings/is where God learns." ("The Winged Energy of Delight", trans. Bly). This is also a major tenet of Process Theologians, but I'll let others carry that thread.

Nice work! We've gotten to the essence of the poem, I think. At least one layer of it. The big question remains...what does this have to do with me? Today? Something in the book's preface pops up, written by one of the translators who is a Jungian psychotherapist (a woman after my own heart!). She talks about the core principle of "reciprocal individuation, which means that a deep and loving encounter generates development": the very act of meeting and witnessing another in an authentic way changes BOTH beings.

Depth therapists know that we are not "doing therapy" to people. If we are genuinely showing up with our whole selves,  "therapy" or healing happens between us and our clients--we both get to have a share of goodness, we both develop, we are both enlarged and stretched beyond what limits us. 

The witnessing of things and people, as a means of making them real, is a deeply spiritual concept and I feel it's great presence settling near me. This truth is what drives me.

It drives me as a healer, certainly. But it also drives me as one in need of healing: the need to be witnessed, to be mirrored, to be seen and heard is powerful and strong, and as ancient as my bones. (BTW--the first sentence and the second are all the same process. Yep, it works that way. We give what we need in order to get what we need.) It happens in any relationship when we have the courage to show up as ourselves and are met by someone with the capacity to take us in and hold us for awhile without trying to change, deny, suppress, or defend against what we lay before them. This is a very tall order for one human to another, but it is essential that we keep striving for it.

I feel like I'm missing a thread here and there, not able to tie it all in and up neatly. Perhaps you can help...

First Blog....First Post

I'm making my way through David Whyte's audiobook The Three Marriages, so this is where I will enter the conversation, mid-stream, navigating the currents of relationships to another person, a work, and this precarious and unsettling connection to something within which I refer to as the Self, Psyche, or Soul...depending on my mood and which teacher-in-absentia I am learning from on any given day.

THE UNIVERSAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL:

Regarding the nature of passionate love (whether it be for a person, an inner calling, or an outer vocation), Whyte says that it is characterized by an "unconscious drive toward vulnerability", that despite all rational thought, common sense, or sound advice, one is compelled to follow the "hidden, non-negotiable conversation that will reorder and reimagine us, preparing us for the marriage to which our falling in love leads." To follow that longing despite the odds, despite the probability of rejection and humiliation, takes us toward an encounter with something that will utterly change us. 

In the following poem, he shows us that this encounter is not necessarily what we are dreaming it to be--happily ever after with our true love, fame and fortune in the perfect job--but something far more significant and perhaps terrifying to the small ego trying to control and manage our lives:

Self-Portrait by David Whyte

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.

from Fire in the Earth
©1992 Many Rivers Press

In his recently published private journal, The Red Book, Carl Jung says, "He could find his soul in desire itself, but not in the objects of desire. If he possessed his desire, and his desire did not posses him, he would lay a hand on his soul, since his desire is the image and expression of his soul." I believe this is related to Rumi's statement (translation by Coleman Barks), "Lovers don't finally meet somewhere/They are in each other all along." Whenever we are feeling that deep, undeniable longing for someone or something, the desire that does not fade and that will not let us sleep, we are hearing the call of the Soul. This also reminds me of Joseph Campbell's exhortation to "Follow your bliss."

What happens when we refuse to follow that call? When we turn away from our desire, our longing, our love, out of fear that we will never have it , or having had it, lose it, we turn away from our own Soul, away from the Self.  What does this look like? In Swamplands of the Soul, Jungian analyst and author James Hollis describes "desuetude", a kind of depression and loss of vitality, as the emotional state that occurs when we are headed in the wrong direction. When we are driving ourselves away from what the Soul wants, she withdraws the life force, cuts the fuel line, kills the engine so that you come to a complete stop until you figure it out. Maybe she is hoping you will ask for directions!

THE PERSONAL and PARTICULAR:

 In college, I studied English poetry and Shakespeare, Theatre, and the sublime but completely impractical art of Oral Interpretation. Can you imagine a Masters' degree in anything more self-indulgent than reading poetry out loud?? Can you imagine my father's anxiety, wondering how in the world I would live on that? He tried so hard to get me to study teaching, so that I would always have a job. Well, I did what I had to do...studied what I loved. And I got a job teaching the art of reading poetry--and other things--out loud as soon as I graduated. I taught that for a decade, and loved every minute of it. Then I got a degree in Jungian psychology. There is nothing less practical than Jungian psychology when you work in a government funded agency. But those loves changed me...brought me closer to my Self than I could ever have imagined as a young woman entering college.  

I have also had experiences loving a person that made me a compulsive neurotic wreck. It was so much easier to follow the career desires! I have been absolutely obliterated by this: the mythology of who I thought I was, left shredded on the floor every time.  Luckily, when I picked up the pieces, I was somehow better. And bigger on the inside. A part of me would like to give up all this suffering for love, but another part of me just takes over and all I can do is fall into the center of my longing again and again, and see where it leads.

My Wild Heart

I have a wild passionate heart.
Restrained by rules and roles
Dutifully acknowledged for years,
She pulses secretly,
and tentatively
reaches out whenever she can.
Soon, in stillness and in play
She will break free
To love what she chooses.

You cannot control or capture
My Wild Heart.
You may only accept what she offers
(or doesn't offer, on her whim)
And tend to your own heart,
Beating wildly within.


BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME...

Have you ever given in to a passionate longing for someone, despite your better judgment? Have you followed a dream, with trepidation and uncertainty, that you were told was impossible? Do you find yourself turning within, in solitude and silence, when you really 'out to get out more'? Marion Woodman would ask, do you go by choice or by compulsion? The answer is always "yes", but even when one is abducted, like Persephone taken down into Hades, there is also a certain amount of courage in the surrender. Where have you been courageous? Where have you refused the call and suffered the consequences? Tell us! Inquiring minds want to know!