Poetry To Inspire

I am posting and sharing some poetry. Poetry is powerful for many reasons, but I think certain poems can reawaken lost parts of selves, lost layers of trueness, lost essentialness...dormant, but overshadowed by pain and layers of shame and uncried tears.

I'll start with Rumi.

The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere,
they're in each other all along.
Translator: Coleman Barks

Rumi:

Suddenly the drunken sweetheart appeared out of my door.
She drank a cup of ruby wine and sat by my side.
Seeing and holding the lockets of her hair
My face became all eyes, and my eyes all hands.
Translator: Shahram Shiva

Is that not beautiful?

I think love is an alchemy of souls. We all have this baggage, most of us. Survivors of sexual violence have more than usual. Love is transformative because it can help us peel away our layers of shame and pain.

Another from Rumi:

When the sweet glance of my true love caught my eyes,
Like alchemy, it transformed my copper-like soul.

Above poems from the books, Essential Rumi and Soul of Rumi both translated by Coleman Barks, and Thief of Sleep translated by Shahram Shiva.

As a teenage, I stumbled upon Rumi and Pablo Neruda, and within me a transformation began, and I remember standing at my window, looking out over the barn....I thought,"I want a man that is this, this poem, these words, this is the love I want." I wanted the personification of this love.

(I found it!)

I think this sort of poetic manifestation is a wonderful way to teach ourselves what we need to e looking for in a mate.

We are throwing back veils of shame and absorbed evil, perversion, and many generations(in most cases incest in multi generational) of painful legacies. My father altered my view of myself. His abuse of me was so overwhelming, on every level, I had to change my own eyes, my own perception in order to survive. We have all had to do this as survivors. How smart and resourceful we are! Yet now in the here and now it must be reworked. What good is our beauty if we refuse to FEEL it? What is our light for if not to illumine our spirit?

Osho --"Your whole idea about yourself is borrowed--
borrowed from those who have no idea of who they are themselves." Excerpts from this modern mystic.

After realizing the above, next comes this:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,
our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child
of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other
people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to
make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously
give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others."

Marianne Willaimson

It freaks the mind to think that we were precious children, innocent and angelic and beautiful, as all children are. We were humiliated and abused, so we tried in various ways to extinguish our light. Our light became a painful reminder of what was unseen, unacknowledged by our abuser. It taps into our rage. Where do we go with all of this rage? I feel direct anger and rage at my father. How do we know when we are feeling core feelings? I have felt myself literally releasing anger like tiny condensation from my skin, like a fog that my skin emits. I try not to avoid this when it comes. I try to surrender and let it seep out. The true self quakes when touched. Mine is, the truth collides into the self I had to create to survive. I can feel that little girl in me. I think we have to sit with and continue allowing the healing to come.

" as a flower blown out by the wind

goes to rest and cannot be defined

gone beyond all images-gone beyond the power of words "
From: Sutra Nipata

Of course I am going to keep trying to define verbalize and express! I have felt deeply the loss of who might I have become if not for the incest? I believe with all of my soul that who we could have been is still within, it is just a matter of finding him or her. Namaste, Sarah