Kundalini Splendor

Modern Poetry

It’s not that they aren’t useful,

these small moments,

glimpses of what they call

“the real”--

real life encounters

at the grocery or hardware,

real automobiles

that fail at crucial moments,

real remembered kisses

in the stolen dark

of the lost years.

These together make up

what we jestingly call

“our lives,”

instants of the indescribable,

fragments of the

forgettable,

things we can cling to,

claim

as “who we are.”

But what, after all,

do such trivia come to--

are they the fabled

“eternity in a grain of sand”?

It is as if a great forgetting were

underway,

as if life had become

shrunken

and narrowed,

as if it were too difficult nowadays

to conjure angels at play,

too painful to remember God.

Dorothy Walters

April 11, 2011

I am a reader of poetry, both ancient and modern. I love the work of the early spiritual poets--Rumi, Hafiz, Kabir--they delight the spirit. I also like many of the more recent writers, especially those such as Mary Oliver, who acknowledge, however obliquely, the role of mystery that infuses the world about us. Denise Levertov, T. S. Eliot, Yeats for sure, Rilke--these speak to the deep soul.

But I sometimes grow impatient at the subject matter of many of the contemporary writers--they seem fixated on the mundane events of "ordinary" life-with its challenges and surprises, its discoveries and perplexities. Now, this indeed is a realm that deserves attention--we can often relate to their work and find parallels with our own lives. And frequently such poets show a profound mastery of technique, and are impressive in their deft use of language as well their subtle perceptions of the inner "meaning" of events.

But most seem so fixated on the realm of the personal that they completely ignore the "big questions." It is as if they have given up on the major concerns of human existence--who we are, why we have come here, what our connection might be to that which is larger than ourselves--the realm of the transpersonal as opposed to the strictly personal. I do not expect today's writers to offer answers to these "big questions," but somehow I wish they would at least acknowledge the invisible realms. I long for those who have the courage that Yeats spoke of when "naked to naked" goes, when the spirit, stripped to it bare essence, confronts the ultimate. Instead, such writers resort to the cloak of irony to avoid any direct confrontation with the imponderables. They pretend that all of existence is composed entirely of "small moments," with no thought to that which may exist beyond the "daily." They are good and often brilliant in their own sphere, but they perform (I think) in a narrow arena.

But we as humans will continue to ponder the deep issues--and today it is the mystics and spiritual explorers who keep such concerns alive. Perhaps one needs a major transformative experience to be whisked out of the ranks of the skeptics into that of the "believers." Kundalini itself is such a transformation. It takes one out of the realm of the "well, maybe, but I'm not sure" into the sphere of those who say "yes, there is more to this world than we have dreamed of," even if we lack precise definitions or names.

(image from quantum-witch on Photobucket--called "Angels with Gabriel")