I felt my life with both my hands
To see if it was there;
I held my spirit to the glass
To prove it possibler;
I turned my being round and round
And paused at every pound
To ask the owner’s name for doubt
That I should know the sound;
I judged my features, jarred my hair,
I pushed my dimples by
And waited-if they twinkled back
Conviction might of me.
I told myself, “Take courage, friend,
That was a former time-
But we might learn to like the heaven
As well as our old home!”
Easy to start my reflection this month with a poem from a very “New Englandly” poet, Emily Dickinson. This poem is found in Bolts of Melody new Poems by Emily Dickinson. The poems published here, are numbered; this poem entitled #265. Why is it easy for me to begin with poem #265? Simply put, Emily poetically shows a clue into her introspective life. For the past twenty one months I have been sharing my own intentions of traveling within to better understand myself wholly souly and less irritably-spiritually.
Emily’s poetic genius is on display here as she so wonderfully explains, “I felt my life with both my hands.” Many times I was told by adults who noticed me while I was in a day dreaming trance, “Mark, stop your navel-gazing!” Please understand I wasn’t just “navel-gazing”, I was removing the lint from my life’s clothes as I leant against my lighthouse!
Back to my inner journey. My will and intention are the keys to see myself objectively. My goal; broaden my personal horizon. I have faith that I am more than my physical being. Faithfully, I want to know my inner being and my higher being as well as I know my outer being.
Intention number one; release my belief system. Of course it’s very hard to do but when done it should be easier to discern the energies within my-self. (I do not lightly use the word discern here. A belief is not always a fact, but if I discern with an open mind what or who is before me or within me, I just might be more enlightened.)
Intention number two; sense the information that feels true to me and examine it. Truth will become an understanding and will not have restrictive properties of a physical belief.
Intention number three; know that when I sense the truth I am understanding on a soul level. My soul understanding will not be able to be verbalized. My judgement and or belief will always be able to be verbalized. My “external mind” is my witness and I recite the witnessing as a physical reality. My “internal mind” senses the knowing.
If you have been following along you know that my faith of “life after death” and “life before birth” is strong. As I have learned and shared in the past (here), “faith” is a belief in something that you have no physical proof is true or real. Many people believe that who we are- is this life only. What is remembered and known before birth is what will be known and remembered after death- nothing.
I was recently reading an article in a 2017 edition of The Atlantic written by a Jordan Michael Smith. The magazine’s article is entitled How to Die. It focuses on an octogenarian psychotherapist, Irvin Yalom. The article is in depth and worth reading in full. I am sharing one small part of the article. Smith states that Yalom, during his practice of treating people with untreatable cancer, is surprised how much comfort they “derived from exploring their existential fears.” “Dying,” Yalom has written, “is lonely, the loneliest event of life.”
In another part of the article Smith writes, “Yalom can be morbid and he doesn’t believe in an afterlife; he says his anxiety about death is soothed somewhat by the belief that what follows life will be the same as what proceeded it. Not surprising, he told me highly religious readers don’t tend gravitate towards his books.” I applaud Irvin Yalom! This man has courage to stick with his beliefs while contemplating a coming chapter in his life. It is easy to cling to something that promises relief from the fear of nothingness. Yalom stays his course. Is he wrong? Someday we will all know the truth to that. A truth I am sensing more and more to be more than nothing.
Next month I will share a step taken to realize my intentions- meditation and/or silence.
Thank you for reading.
Mark