English version by Ivan M. Granger

Sometimes
      I go about pitying myself.

Yet all the while
      I am carried by winds
      across the sky.

— from This Dance of Bliss: Ecstatic Poetry from Around the World, Edited by Ivan M. Granger

/ Image by ahermin /

Usually, all it takes is a shift in perspective.

We frequently feel hurt or angry or sad or just trapped. The common response, especially in our task-oriented modern era, is to decide what we are going to do about it. We try to take charge. We act, we do, we fix. And, yes, that approach can be useful in many circumstances.

But we need to make sure we don’t ‘do’ as a way to avoid feeling. Frequently we have an impulse toward action because, otherwise, we will have to feel, and what we actually feel may not be pleasant or contained. But if we don’t feel fully, some part of ourselves has been shut down, separated from the whole, and our field of perception has narrowed.

That’s the other reason not to rush to action. ‘Doing’ can become a way to reinforce our limited ideas about reality. Action is like a ritual, it makes everything feel more real, more imprinted in the mind. This can be a good thing or it can be a trap. It depends on whether or not we are seeing clearly.

In any situation, the first thing to do is to not do anything. Instead, we should first allow our perspective to shift. We must see what we see. This is the most potent act possible. Seemingly doing nothing, all of reality changes. The willingness to step aside from our own internal dramas allows us to recognize and utilize the great currents already flowing soundlessly through our lives. Then, in harmony with that underlying momentum, should we choose to act, our actions have a power and purpose, bringing extraordinary results.

We soar, we dance, we are carried by winds across the sky.

Recommended Books: Ojibway (Anonymous)

The Essential Mystics: Selections from the World’s Great Wisdom Traditions	The Path of the Rainbow: An Anthology of Songs and Chants From the Indians of North America

The Ojibway (Chippewa) are one of the most numerous nations of Native Americans. Traditional Ojibway lands are centered in Michigan, Minnesota, Saskatchewan and surrounding regions.

Attributing this to the 19th century is a guess. The source book did not estimate the date of composition.

More poetry by Ojibway (Anonymous)

They speak of enlightenment.

O, My Invisible,
you and I know the secret ways.

— from The Ley Lines of the Soul: Poems of Ecstasy and Ascension, by Dorothy Walters

/ Image by Ricardo Gomez Angel /

A short one today from my beloved friend Dorothy Walters who passed away just a few years ago.

Dorothy and I connected in the early 2000s, around the time I started the Poetry Chaikhana as a website, and she was first blogging about her experiences of spiritual opening. She reached out to me and we began a correspondence. Not long after, she moved back to Boulder, Colorado, where she had lived and taught for many years previously, and where I was also living at the time. So we had the opportunity to meet regularly for brunches, laughter, discussions of poetry, and the movements of spirit in our lives.

We were in different phases of life. She was already retired and several decades my senior. Now, many years later, as I approach 60 and begin to imagine my own elder years, I look back upon my time and friendship with Dorothy as a source of inspiration, a template of sorts for how I might integrate the outpourings from the inner world with a still active outer life.

It’s a question most of us deal with at one level or another. What is the ideal work-life balance? Of course, work is not somehow separate from or contrary to our life. For most of us, it’s a hugely important aspect of our lives. But what is that inner-outer balance?

In some ways, this question is up for me more than it has been at any other point in my life. For much of my adult life, I’ve tended to view my work as a necessary chore, necessary to my life role, but always secondary. Spirituality, poetry, my immediate relationships were always primary in my mind. Interestingly, work has become more prominent in recent months for me. This is why the Poetry Chaikhana emails have been less frequent. I’ve been particularly busy with my work as a computer programmer. Right now, I’m especially focused on preparing for an upcoming conference.

While many around my age are perhaps winding down their work energies, my work focus is ramping up. It’s both enlivening and challenging to feel more engaged in the outer expressions of my life. It brings me back to that question of inner life, outer life, how to be fully engaged in an active outer life while remaining well-centered in a vibrant inner life. Some days that conscious integration, acting on all those levels in a balanced way simultaneously, seems effortful, perhaps beyond my immediate capacity. Then, on other days, I’m naturally in the flow and I don’t see a real separation; even the outer life is really just a further expression of that radiance within.

So I come back to the words of this poem by Dorothy. Can… light illumine light? It’s all there radiant at every level right now. Do I need to add effort in order to integrate things? Or do I simply need to remember to pause and see that it is already all illuminated?

We’ll see in the coming years how this plays out in my life. How prominent will my work remain? Will I eventually shift my activities more to something similar to what Dorothy did late in her life, meeting with circles of people on the spiritual journey, lovers of the arts and poetry, hoping to be a gentle light that inspires others? Dorothy spent most of her life teaching others, so sitting in on small social groups felt natural to her. I’ve tended to be a quiet, rather private, individual. So perhaps my pathway will be different. Or perhaps through my evolving work activities, I’m cultivating new qualities and skills that will lead to my own unique ways of connecting and sharing in my later years. We shall see. I am curious. I remain open.

you and I know the secret ways.

Have a beautiful day!

Recommended Books: Dorothy Walters

The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology)	This Dance of Bliss: Ecstatic Poetry from Around the World	Marrow of Flame : Poems of the Spiritual Journey	The Ley Lines of the Soul: Poems of Ecstasy and Ascension	Diamond Cutters: Visionary Poets in America, Britain & Oceania
More Books >>

Dorothy Walters US (1928 – 2023) Timeline Secular or Eclectic

Dorothy Walters, PHD, spent most of her early professional life as a professor of English literature in various Midwestern universities. She helped to found one of the first women’s studies programs in this country and served as the director of this program for many years. After an extended residence in San Francisco, she spent the later years of her life in Colorado, where she had a close relationship with the mountains as well as various streams and canyons.

Ms. Walters underwent a major Kundalini awakening in 1981 (a phenomenon totally unfamiliar to her as well as to most of her contemporaries at the time). Following that experience she devoted her life to researching and writing about this subject and to witnessing the unfolding of this process within herself as well as assisting others on a similar path through writing and other means. As someone who made her extensive journey without the direction of any external leader or guru, church, or established order, she was a strong believer in the “guru within,” the inner guide rather than the external authority figure or institution.

She felt that universal Kundalini awakening is the means for planetary and personal evolution of consciousness, and that evidence of planetary initiation is becoming more and more prevalent. Her Kundalini awakening and subsequent process of unfolding are described in her memoir Unmasking the Rose: A Record of Kundalini Initiation.  Her poems taken from her four previous volumes are published as Some Kiss We Want: Poems Selected and New. Her article on “Kundalini and the Mystic Path” was included in Kundalini Rising, an anthology from Sounds True Publications. Her poems, which have been included in many anthologies and journals, have been set to music and sung at the Royal Opera House in London as well as Harvard University, used as texts for sermons and read aloud in churches, included in doctoral projects, been frequently quoted, and have given inspiration to many.

The Poetry Chaikhana publishes her best-known collection of poetry, Marrow of Flame.

She often gave counsel and referral free of charge to those undergoing spontaneous Kundalini awakening and/or spiritual transformation.

Dorothy Walters published her blog, Kundalini Splendor, at www.kundalinisplendor.blogspot.com.

She passed away in 2023 in Colorado.

More poetry by Dorothy Walters

English version by Stephen Mitchell

We awaken in Christ’s body
as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ, He enters
my foot, and is infinitely me.

and recognized as whole, as lovely,
and radiant in His light
he awakens as the Beloved
in every last part of our body.

— from The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry, by Stephen Mitchell

/ Image by Mads Schmidt Rasmussen /

I have been rereading John Anthony McGuckin’s The Book of Mystical Chapters, which is a selection of short poems and insights, many of them from the desert fathers and other voices from the rich Eastern Orthodox tradition — beautiful little meditations. And one of the visionaries highlighted repeatedly is Symeon the New Theologian. Despite my Russian name, I was not raised in Orthodox Christianity myself, but I have really come to appreciate many of these profound mystics, perhaps most especially Symeon the New Theologian. This is one of my favorite poems by Symeon the New Theologian.

Symeon doesn’t urge us to merely honor or love the Beloved (Christ within the Christian tradition) from a distance. We melt into the Divine, become one with the Divine, share the same body.

I move my hand, and wonderfully
my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him

Some of these lines remind me of a poem often inaccurately attributed to Teresa of Avila, You Are Christ’s Hands with it’s lines– “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, / no hands but yours…”

This poem by Symeon is one I just want to drink in — it feels so deeply healing and generous to the soul.

and everything that is hurt, everything
that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably
damaged, is in Him transformed

and recognized as whole, as lovely,
and radiant in His light
he awakens as the Beloved
in every last part of our body.

Have a beautiful day discovering the Beloved within.

Recommended Books: Symeon the New Theologian

The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology)	This Dance of Bliss: Ecstatic Poetry from Around the World	Real Thirst: Poetry of the Spiritual Journey	The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry	The Book of Mystical Chapters: Meditations on the Soul’s Ascent from the Desert Fathers and Other Early Christian Contemplatives
More Books >>

Symeon the New Theologian Turkey (949 – 1032) Timeline Christian : Eastern Orthodox

Symeon was born into an aristocratic family in Asia Minor (Turkey) and was given the name George. This was when the region was still part of the Christian Byzantine Empire. From boyhood George was groomed for a life in politics. At age eleven, he was sent to the capital Constantinople (Istanbul) to live with his uncle who guided him in his early education.

When he was 14, George met a monk at the monastery of Studios named Symeon the Pious. George accepted Symeon the Pious as his spiritual director while continuing to prepare for a life in politics.

Somewhere around age 20, George was overcome by an ecstatic state in which he experienced God as a living presence of radiant light.

Despite this radically transformative experience, he spent several more years attempting to fulfill his family’s expectations, eventually becoming an imperial senator. However, his continuing mystical experiences were not compatible with such a public life and, at age 27, he renounced his previous life and became a monk, entering the monastery at Studios to continue under the direct guidance his spiritual director, even taking on the same monastic name — Symeon.

The closeness teacher and disciple shared worried the monastic authorities and the two were separated. The young Symeon was given the choice of remaining at Studios and no longer receiving spiritual guidance from the elder Symeon, or he could go to another monastery and keep his spiritual director.

So as not to lose the guidance of Symeon the Pious, the young Symeon chose to move to the monastery of St. Mamas in Constantinople. There, Symeon was ordained a priest and eventually became the abbot of the monastery, reviving the monastery’s life of prayer and meditation. While abbot of St. Mamas, Symeon wrote extensive treatises (called the Catecheses) as guidelines for the ideal monastic and God-focused life, emphasizing the power of contemplative prayer and meditation.

The mystical spiritual practices that he advocated led to further conflicts with authorities and Symeon was exiled in 1009 to a small hermitage on the far side of the Bosphorus.

Disciples began to gather around Symeon and soon the small hermitage grew into a full monastery. It was there that Symeon wrote his most personal work, Hymns of Divine Love, a collection of poems describing his mystical experiences.

Symeon’s doctrines and poetry emphasize not only the possibility, but the necessity of personally experiencing the Divine. He also stated that one need not be a monk or renunciate, saying that one “who has wife and children, crowds of servants, much property, and a prominent position in the world” can still directly experience communion with the divine.

Giving him the title of “Theologian” does not mean that he was a formal, rationalist Christian philosopher, as we might use the term today, especially in Western Christian and philosophical traditions. Within Orthodox Christian tradition, the epithet of “Theologian” has been only given to a few figures, specifically indicating that this is a figure with direct experience of God. In other words, he is considered to be a mystic of full Realization.

More poetry by Symeon the New Theologian

But sweeter still than laughter and greater than longing came to me.
It was the boundless in you;
The vast man in whom you are all but cells and sinews;
He in whose chant all your singing is but a soundless throbbing.
It is in the vast man that you are vast,
And in beholding him that I beheld you and loved you.
For what distances can love reach that are not in that vast sphere?
What visions, what expectations and what presumptions can outsoar that flight?
Like a giant oak tree covered with apple blossoms is the vast man in you.
His might binds you to the earth, his fragrance lifts you into space, and in his durability you are deathless.

— from The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran

/ Image by Joshua Earle /

I know the poem emails have been irregular in recent months. My work as a computer programmer has been especially busy this year, and I am still figuring out how to balance that with my poetry work. So, since I missed the last few Fridays, I thought I’d send a rare Monday poem to you. And, as I was somewhat randomly going through my library, I was reminded of this treasure by the great Kahlil Gibran.

It is in the vast man that you are vast

I can write a long commentary, line by line, about how this lovely poem maps beautifully to the deep experiences of stillness and settling into the true Self. But I feel inclined to let the poem sing to us instead — quietly, yet the melody comes through.

This is the way, the stillness that leads us to the vast man — or woman — the vast self. This is the immense being we all are, all-encompassing, all-embracing, in which the little self is made whole and more than whole in the grand unity that is the web of which we are a part. Through this one we know ourselves as we come to know ourselves in others and in all that surrounds us and all that lives and breathes and aspires and grows.

Like a giant oak tree covered with apple blossoms is the vast man in you.
His might binds you to the earth, his fragrance lifts you into space, and in his durability you are deathless.

Have a beautiful day!

Recommended Books: Kahlil Gibran

The Prophet	The Beloved: Reflections on the Path of the Heart	Broken Wings	Jesus the Son of Man	Kahlil Gibran: His Life & World
More Books >>

Kahlil Gibran Lebanon/US (1883 – 1931) Timeline Christian Secular or Eclectic

Kahlil Gibran, because of his name, is often assumed to have been a Muslim, but he was actually a Maronite Christian, originally from what is today Lebanon (then part of Syria and the Ottoman Empire).

His father, also named Kahlil, had drinking problems and gambling debts. This led the senior Gibran to leave his job as an assistant pharmacist, taking work instead as an enforcer for the local Ottoman administrator. He eventually ended up in jail.

This difficult situation left the family in poverty. As a result, Gibran did not receive a formal education as a young boy, but a local priest taught him to read Arabic and Syriac, as well as stories from the Bible, filling him with an early awareness of the mystical dimensions of Christianity.

When Gibran was eight, his mother moved the family, including his older half-brother and his two younger sisters, to Boston. Although shy, Gibran quickly learned English and, thanks to a scholarship, started to receive more of a formal education.

The boy became fascinated by Boston’s world of art and music, visiting galleries and performances. At age 13, his artistic gifts came to the attention of cultural circles in Boston, where he was further introduced to artistic trends.

Despite this early success, Gibran was sent back to Lebanon to complete his education, where he excelled in poetry.

He returned to the United States in 1902 in the midst of a family crisis. His mother had cancer, and his older brother and his fourteen-year-old sister had tuberculosis. His sister soon died. The brother, who had been supporting the family with a small hardware store, moved to Cuba to try to recover his health, leaving the young Gibran in the difficult position of having to take over the hardware business. A year later, his brother returned from Cuba, but died soon thereafter. The same year, his mother also died.

In the aftermath of so much death, Gibran sold the family business and threw all of his energy into art and writing and perfecting his English. He also reconnected with the Boston cultural benefactors he had known as a child.

He began to write columns for an Arabic-language newspaper and later collected these writings into his first published books.

In 1909, Gibran went to Paris for two years to broaden his artistic training, and he was particularly influenced by the artistic Symbolist movement, with its open embrace of mysticism.

Returning to America, he began to publish his first Arabic prose-poetry collections through a publisher in Egypt. He became active with Arab intellectual and artistic organizations, promoting the rich culture of the Arab-speaking world, while attempting to address its many problems under Western imperial rule.

In 1911, Gibran moved to New York. There he met and was influenced Abdul Baha, the leader of the Bahai Faith movement. He also met Carl Jung and was asked to paint the famous psychologist’s portrait, at which time Gibran became intrigued by Jungian philosophy.

Gibran began to write in his adopted language of English, writing The Madman, though it would be rejected by several publishing houses until a small publisher named Alfred Knopf would take a chance on the work.

When World War I broke out, he worked to free Syria from Ottoman rule, but was frustrated by the messy realities of war and power games of international politics.

In the years following publication of his best known work, The Prophet, Gibran would gain international notoriety.

More poetry by Kahlil Gibran

I’m ceded–I’ve stopped being Theirs–
The name They dropped upon my face
With water, in the country church
Is finished using, now,
And They can put it with my Dolls,
My childhood, and the string of spools,
I’ve finished threading–too–

My second Rank–too small the first–
Crowned–Crowing–on my Father’s breast–
A half unconscious Queen–
But this time–Adequate–Erect,
With Will to choose, or to reject,
And I choose–just a Crown–

— from Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, Edited by Jane Hirshfield

/ Image by live-showtime /

I believe this poem belongs among the great enlightenment poems. At the same time its words pointedly cut at religious convention.

Something has happened. Something that makes Emily Dickinson erupt from the opening lines, fiercely asserting that she is “ceded,” that she has “stopped being Theirs.” This is a proclamation of supreme yielding or dying to oneself that is also her escape into freedom.

She no longer has use for “The name They dropped upon my face” when she was baptized. That name is now something that she has set aside with other childish things. Not just set aside, it has fallen away. Her social identity, the person “They” call Emily has ceased to exist. She has discovered herself to be something larger, more essential, more true. She has exploded into an identity so immense and all-encompassing that it is the “supremest name” — the Ultimate, the Absolute. She has been “Called to my full,” a state of awareness in which “Existence’s whole Arc” is “filled up.”

But also notice the iconoclastic way she refers to baptism. The first baptism was a baptism given to her “without the choice” and imposes upon her a name that is “too small,” that must be grown out of and abandoned. She implies that that first baptism initiated her into the social world, not the spiritual one. That name that “They dropped upon my face” had trapped her, making her “Theirs,” somehow controlled and contained by societal conventions represented by the “country church.” She contrasts this with being “Crowned,” a second baptism, but one received inwardly, “consciously, of Grace.” She implies that this second baptism is the real anointing that gives true freedom, not the baptism she received as a child. For much of the Christian world that is a dangerous assertion even today, a century and a half later. Her words challenge fellow Christians to seek the inner anointing, of which the outer baptism is a reflection.

The last line particularly grabs my attention, “And I choose–just a Crown–” Rather than choosing (or rejecting) a new name or renewed social ego, she possesses the clarity and “Will” to choose instead to reside in the immensity of this “supremest name.” What else needs to be said?

Recommended Books: Emily Dickinson

The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology)	The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson	This Dance of Bliss: Ecstatic Poetry from Around the World	Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women	The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry
More Books >>

Emily Dickinson US (1830 – 1886) Timeline Secular or Eclectic Christian : Protestant

Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 to a prominent family in Amherst, Massachusetts. Few of her poems were published during her lifetime, the bulk of her poetry having been discovered after her death in the 1880s. Despite this anonymity during her lifetime, Dickinson has come to be regarded as one of the greatest of American poets. Her unusual use of rhyme, meter, and grammar anticipates modernist trends in 20th century poetry.

She attended Amherst Academy and a year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary.

While at the seminary, Dickinson famously refused to participate in the show of evangelical conversion sweeping through her community at the time. Much of her poetry, however, meditates on heaven and the inner life, often contrasting the private moment against public religious convention. She was clearly a critic of the common practice of religion, leading many to casually label her as an atheist, yet there is no denying that she experienced a rich inner life that she understood in religious terms. While unconventional by the religious standards of her day, the argument can be made that she was a deep mystic. If one reads her poetry side-by-side with the poet-saints of India, for example, the parallels in metaphoric language and insight become obvious.

Following her return from Mount Holyoke, Emily Dickinson almost never left Amherst again, rarely even leaving the grounds of her family home. Later in life she took to dressing entirely in white.

Much is made of Dickinson’s reclusive life, the fact that she never married, and the focus on death in much of her poetry, leading to descriptions of her as a morbid, sexually repressed recluse. One can see her in this way; or, recognizing the depth of her mysticism, we can imagine that she cultivated a self-defined monastic life of contemplation and poetry.

More poetry by Emily Dickinson