Dear Friends,
I hope you are all well, and have been enjoying the beautiful autumn sunshine (at least here in the UK).
There’s a special kind of sunshine in the autumn - very clear and radiant, almost translucent, and when the sky is clear, its blue seems even more perfect and still. For me, it’s a great time for walking and cycling. One thing I’ve really been enjoying recently is cycling along the canals in Manchester - there are so many of them, some of them almost hidden, and it’s like a secret network running through the city, and one which connects to you to the city’s past. I love cycling without being
able to explain why I love it. When you drive, you’re disconnected from your surroundings, enclosed in a metal cell, but when you cycle, you feel part of your surroundings, and part of the element
Fortunately I have had a quiet October, at least so far - it’s enabled me to recuperate after my crazily busy September. And in response to the quietness, I have written quite a few new poetic pieces. It’s a
little distracting, because I’ve given myself the task of completing my new prose book The Leap by the end of this year. I’m about half way through, and have the rest planned out pretty well, so it should be feasible. However. often when I sit down to work on The Leap, I find myself writing poetic pieces instead. I start writing them, and hours pass very quickly, and then it’s time to pick the kids up from school! I’ll include one of the new pieces at the end of this
newsletter.
I no longer think of them as poems, by the way, since I don’t think they correspond very closely to many of the conventional ideas of what poetry should be. At the British Transpersonal psychology conference about a month, I did a reading from The Calm Center, with my friend and colleague El-liot Cohen giving me musical accompaniment (see the photo below). The morning after the
reading, a transpersonal psychologist who writes poetry challenged me on my ‘poetry’, saying it that I was only “trying to be a poet” because “you don’t use poetic meter.”
“But I didn’t say they were poems,” I replied. “And in any case, who says that poems have to have meter?”
Another factor is that some people are put off
by the term “poetry”, since it reminds them of reading impenetrable and obscure old verses at school. In the end, it doesn’t really matter what you call them, I suppose. I think of them as an outflow of my spiritual self, from the highest part of my being, intended to provide guidance and inspiration for the reader. The reading at the conference was great fun, and the musical accompaniment from Elliot was great
- he’s a really sensitive musician who responded instinctively to the tones of the pieces. It worked so well that we’ve decided to do it again, possibly at an evening event at the Samatha Buddhist centre in Manchester. The photo below shows us warming up for the reading: Upcoming Events
And on Saturday November 7th, I’m doing my first ever
talk in Ireland. I’m speaking at the ‘Infinite Arts’ conference in Cork. It’s a one day event with a variety of speakers - more information here: http://www.theinfinitearts.com/ia-conference2015/
It will be the first time I’ve been to Ireland in about 15 years. Like a lot of people from the
North-West of England (particularly from Liverpool and Manchester) there’s some Irish blood in my veins, so it feels good to go back there. New Poetic Piece
As promised, here is a new poetic piece, ‘Meeting without Masks.’ I wrote it over a couple of days, and finished it yesterday, so it may not be in its
final form - and it may not be any good! Who knows…
Let’s meet without masks
without imaginary hierarchies of status
or artificial shows of respect
knowing that we don’t need to try to impress one another
with charm or humour or
intelligence
knowing that we don’t need to chatter foolishly
to fill uneasy silences.
Let’s meet without fear
of exposing our vulnerabilities
without being embarrassed by our need for connection
and pretending to be aloof or autonomous
since we’re not isolated, self-sufficient entities
but fragments that are drawn towards wholeness.
Let’s meet without insecurity
knowing we don’t need to prove that we’re worthy of acceptance
because we’re already acceptable
knowing we don’t need to prove that we’re worthy of affection
but simply let affection flow between us.
Let’s meet without the past
without letting our urge to
connect and merge
be obstructed by old resentments
without letting our natural flow of empathy
become blocked by hard, fixed prejudice
without letting our natural benevolence
be overridden by concepts and constructs
that create divisions, where none exist.
Let’s meet without intention
knowing we don’t have to try to relate
because we’re already
related
knowing that we don’t need to try
but simply allow ourselves to be.
Let’s meet purely with presence
and be wholly here to one another
knowing that, in essence, we are the same
knowing that, in being, we are one.
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