I have been reading a lot of David Whyte’s poetry as I prepare for my upcoming retreat in Hawaii, The Wild Cosmic Heart. I have been reading about what arouses, awakens, opens, shifts, transforms, and lifts the heart. What would it take to listen to our wild, cosmic heart? As Whyte wrote, “Sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you.”
In his book, Crossing the Unknown Sea, there is a poem that speaks to becoming more visible, to risking everything to becoming alive.
There is a lovely root to the word humiliation – from the latin word humus, meaning soil or ground. When we are humiliated, we are in effect returning to the ground of our being.
Shedding the carapace we have been building so assiduously on the surface, we must by definition give up exactly what we thought was necessary to protect us from further harm. The outlaw is the radical, the one close to the roots of existence. The one who refuses to forget their humanity and in remembering, helps everyone else remember too.
To die inside, is to rob our outside life of any sense of arrival from that interior. Our work is to make ourselves visible in the world. This is the soul’s individual journey, and the soul would much rather fail at its own life than succeed at someone else’s.
If you want to explore your untamed heart and risk becoming more alive, then join me in Hawaii November 4-10, 2012 where we will explore the vast sea of our hearts.