Walk Whitman: A Noiseless Patient Spider

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45473/a-noiseless-patient-spider 

A Noiseless Patient Spider

By Walt Whitman

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,

Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

Don't Know Mind

 Use this practice to bring wisdom to a situation of inner or outer conflict.  Initially begin by sitting.  Later you can practice in social situations.

Sit quietly and easily, focusing on your breath or body. When you feel settled, bring to mind a time ten years ahead. Recognize that you don’t know what will happen then. Feel the not knowing and relax with it.  Think of the earth spinning through space with hundreds of thousands of people being born and dying every day.  Where does each life come from? How did it start? 

There are so many things we don’t know. Feel the truth of don’t know mind, relax and become comfortable with it.

Now, bring to mind a conflict, inner or outer.  Be aware of all the thoughts and opinions you have about how it should be, about how they should be.  Now recognize that you don’t really know.  Maybe the wrong thing will lead to something better. You don’t know.

Consider how would it be to approach yourself, the situation, the other people with don’t know mind.  Feel it. Don’t know. Not sure.  No fixed opinion. Allow yourself to want to understand anew. Approach it with don’t know mind. With openness.  How does don’t know mind affect the situation?  Does it improve it, make it wiser, easier? More relaxed?

Practice don’t know mind until you are comfortable resting in uncertainty, until you can do your best and laugh and say “Don’t know.”

This excerpt is taken from the book, ” “The Wise Heart”

"Fluent" ~ John O'Donohue ~ Don't Know mind

 

Fluent – John O’Donohue

Posted on February 17, 2008

I would love to live
Like a river flows
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding

I find this poem, called Fluent, really moving. It entices me to live in an unknowing of what will happen.

It finishes off a kind of obituary to him in the March issue of Third Way magazine, as they quote an extract from a talk that he gave at Greenbelt, from whose web site you can probably download his talk.

Described as an Irish writer and mystic, he talks of how the root of all our fears is death, and the antidote is love.

Two other quotes touched me. In the first he talks of the importance of remaining best friends with ourselves. The second is this:

Meister Eckhard [a medieval German mystic] said: 'There is a place in the soul that neither time nor flesh nor any created thing can touch'. A place inside you that no one has never got to, or hurt or damaged – a place where there is peace, serenity, courage and healing. At your deepest core you don't actually belong to yourself. But you belong to a beauty, an intimacy and a shelter that offers you every freedom that you could ever imagine.

More on this blog from John O'Donohue.

Apologies that the original version of this article incorrectly referred to John O'Donoghue.

Don't Know Mind - Gregory Orr

 

Untitled [This is what was bequeathed us]

Gregory Orr - 1946-

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This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving,
Left to us.

No other world
But this one:
Willows and the river
And the factory
With its black smokestacks.

No other shore, only this bank
On which the living gather.

No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.

That, and the beloved’s clear instructions:
Turn me into song; sing me awake.

Mary Oliver - 'When Death Comes'

 

When Death Comes

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

 

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox;

 

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

 

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

 

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

 

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

 

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

 

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

 

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

 

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.