Monday, March 30, 2009

Poetry, A Bridge Between the Physical and Spiritual Worlds


Poetry is the language of feelings and intuition. As such, it structures the feelings and intuitions of the inner world in a form that can be apprehended by the outer world. Since it uses the mental matrices of emotion, feeling, and intuition, it does not have to conform to any idea of linear logic, which can be the antithesis of spiritual knowingness.

Poetry is an excellent mechanism to connect the physical and the spiritual world, a bridge between the two, a place where the two can meet. I feel that every search for God or spiritual understanding, is actually a search for the self. We search, I believe, because we all live double lives–one life in the physical world and another in the spiritual world–simultaneously. Our mentality, or what we call our personality, arises from roots in both worlds. We are spiritual beings who are presently experiencing a physical existence and too often we forget that we need to touch that spiritual part of ourselves. Poetry can, indeed, spark that remembrance of who we really are.

Poetry can reveal and evoke a wide range of thoughts and feelings: love, beauty, compassion, joy, mysticism, wisdom, imagination, metaphysics, spirituality, struggles, fears, disappointments –to name only a few. Often a poem is a spiritual or metaphysical flow of words filled with love and inspiration, and is romantic, heartfelt, visionary, and transcendental.


“It is a beautiful belief,
That ever round our head
Are hovering, on viewless wings,
The spirits of the dead.”
~Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)



~Linda

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Linda,

I was emailing a friend about the same topic just a few days ago. The world is poetry in motion. Instead of choosing to see the world as flat and literal, we can look just underneath our actions, attachments, and possessions and see symbols and metaphors in action. Its a deeper and fuller language that can enrich our lives and can bring added dimensions of awareness to our being. If we all were to see the world poeticly, we could more easily relate to the people and world around us with the ability to compassionately see through the eyes of our neighbors.

Linda Pendleton said...

Bernie, thanks for your comments, and you are so right about seeing the world poetically would allow for more compassion.