I hope you are well. Happy new year! I hope the following 12 months bring you a lot of wellbeing and fulfilment. And to help you along, I want to send you three poetic pieces I’ve written recently.
The first one is my take on the famous poem by Rudyard Kipling, ‘If.’ It’s a reflection on the meaning of success. The second is a meditation on the nature of things, as they unfold in our awareness. And the message of ‘Perfection’ is not to be hard on yourself! Don’t expect yourself to be perfect, or to be immune to weakness.
As ever, let me know what you think. I’m still collating a new book of poems and am thinking of including these three. I have over 100 new poems (that is, since the publication of my last book of poems, The Calm Center) and will only be able to publish around 50 in a new book, so I will have to make some tough decisions!
If
If you can find out who you really are
beneath the habits and opinions that you’ve absorbed
and the instructions that you unthinkingly follow -
If you can distinguish the deep impulses of your soul
from the shallow desires of your ego
and let streams of thought pass through your mind
without latching on or listening -
If you can sense the sun of your true self
behind layers of cloudy concepts and constructs
and keep your mind open and clear
so that soul-force shines through every action of your life -
then that’s all you ever need to achieve.
There’s no need to search for answers
if you're expressing the truth that's inside you.
There's no need to look for meaning
if you’ve found the path you were meant to follow.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re applauded or ridiculed
whether you make a mark on the world
or live and die in obscurity.
If you can do what you’re supposed to do
and be exactly who you’re meant to be -
then that’s all you ever need to achieve.
Processes
The world isn’t made up of separate things, with space between them,
or discrete events that stop and start -
the world is made up of processes
that merge and converge and feed and form each other
in an endless dynamic flow.
Listen - there are no isolated sounds,
just flowing streams of noise
that arise and pass through your awareness.
Look - there are no individual sights or scenes,
just the movement of forms through space,
passing through your range of vision.
In time, there are no discrete moments
that pass out of the present and into the past.
There’s just an endless flow of experience, which is always now.
In the world, there no separate human beings,
just expressions of the same essence
like waves on the surface of an ocean,
that rise, take form and fade and fall,
as we pass through the process of life.
Perfection
Don’t be ashamed of your weakness.
Nobody ever expected you to be completely pure.
Nobody ever expected you to be completely free
of pride and greed and lust.
You’re not a monk or hermit, after all,
who keeps himself pure by hiding from the world.
You’re not a disembodied spirit
who has no instincts to satisfy
and no desires to control.
Down here, life is a teeming market place
full of stress and stimulation.
It’s not easy to stay stable
when the crowd keeps pushing and pulling.
It’s not easy to abstain
which the traders keep offering you goods.
Accept your impurity
even as you try to purify yourself.
And accept that you will never be completely pure
and that there is no need to be.
You are already perfect
in your imperfection.
All best wishes and blessings, Steve
