Sounds True presents Images of Fire, Creativity and Personal Passion with David White. David White was born and raised in the north of England and educated in Wales. He's the author of two volumes of poetry, Songs for Coming Home and Where Many Rivers Meet. On Images of Fire, Creativity and Personal Passion, David White examines the fiery nature of desire and celebrates it as the wellspring of all real inspiration. And now, recorded live, Images of Fire, Creativity and Personal Passion, with David White. What I want to really do this evening in some ways is to call on the poetic tradition to build up the gravity well of desire and longing so much that it overcomes the shame which have been attached to kind of surface desires.

[01:09]

Traditional religions, be they east or west, have kind of shamed us out of our deeper desires by being distrustful of surface desire. And so in some ways we seem to have lost any ability to go and follow what is most precious to us. And that in itself is a fire. I want to start with a poem which is translated by the woman who will be presenting tomorrow, Jane Hirshfield, called Singing Images of Fire, written by an 8th century Zen master, Kukai. He says, the hand moves and the fire's whirling takes different shapes. The hand moves and the fire's whirling takes different shapes. All things change when we do the first word. Ah, blossoms into all others. Each of them is true. The hand moves and the fire's whirling takes different shapes.

[02:17]

Feel the fanning of the flames there. Some flames, inner flames, outer flames, flames, fire. The hand moves and the fire's whirling takes different shapes. All things change when we do. All things change when we do. The first word, ah, blossoms into all others. Each of them is true. The first word, ah, blossoms into all others. The first word, ah, blossoms into all others. Each of them is true. And something tremendous about this R. First of all, Kukai says, you don't speak the truth unless first of all you get the R from which the truth springs. Seems to me this R is a tremendous R in that it not only contains the R of inspiration, it contains the R of Monday morning, driving to work through the smog in Oakland. The hand moves and the fire's whirling takes different shapes.

[03:23]

All things change when we do the first word. Ah. The first word. Ah. Blossoms into all others. Each of them is true. Just try coming in on this ah. Get both ahs in. The hand moves and the fire's whirling takes different shapes. All things change when we do the first word. Ah. Ah. I have one kind of ah there, let's have the other in. The first word, ah, the first word, ah, blossoms into all others. Each of them is true. The astonishing thing about this ah is that it's Kukai's own ah. It's all of him present in this ah. That's the fire I want to go into, the fire of first-hand experience of our own experience of the world. which for some reason we have disowned.

[04:28]

We do not believe it belongs to us. There's a feeling in some ways in individuals and in the culture as a whole that our own experience is not enough and never will be enough. Here's Pablo Neruda looking back to the moment where he stepped into his destiny as a poet. He couldn't write when he started. Van Gogh couldn't paint when he started. It took him only eight years to achieve mastery. It's astonishing. If you see Van Gogh's paintings, when he left, the Borinage district of Belgium decided he would not be a preacher and missionary anymore, but would paint. It's barely better than you or I. But for him it was enough. Just that stroke on the canvas was enough, and he followed it. The first word, ah, blossoms into all others. Each of them is true. So Pablo Neruda looks back at his own ah and his first feeling of enoughness.

[05:36]

He says, . and something ignited in my soul fever or unremembered wings and I went my own way deciphering that burning fire and I wrote the first bare line bare without substance pure foolishness pure wisdom of one who knows nothing and suddenly I saw the heavens unfasten and open and suddenly I saw the heavens unfasten and open Y algo golpeaba en mi alma, fiebre o alas perdidas, y me fui haciendo solo, descifrando aquella que me dura, y escribí la primera línea vaga, vaga, sin cuerpo, pura tontaría, pura sabiduría, del que no sabe nada. Y vi de pronto el cielo descrenado y abierto.

[06:40]

Y vi de pronto el cielo descrenado y abierto. Follow the vowel sounds in the Spanish. It's just as if you're descending into your body at the same time as you're paying tremendous attention to the outer world. Heaven and earth coming together. He goes down into his body. You think he's gone far enough, and he still keeps going. till he comes to rest. Solid ground there of his own experience. A astonishing thing seems to be is that when you get to your own experience, it suddenly doesn't belong to this I who began the journey of trying to find their own experience.

[07:46]

One's own experience is suddenly the great communal common experience. Y algo golpeaba en mi alma, something ignited in my soul, fiebre o alas perdidas, fever or unremembered wings. Y me fui haciendo solo, descifrando aquí a quemadura. Brilliant lines. And I went my own way. How many times can we say that? And I went my own way. This is Pablo Neruda's Frank Sinatra line. The Sinatra doctrine in poetry. Deciphering that burning fire. Deciphering those flames. Tremendous intimation there, that going your own way involves not simply disappearing off in some kind of fantasy land of one's own, but deciphering this flame which is the self.

[08:58]

But the self is a fluid possibility. In a flame is this tremendous ignition of gases and colors, sublimation. What is on fire is not the same as what was there before it caught fire. One's life is not the same as one's life is when it has caught fire. Something ignited in my soul, fever or unremembered wings, he doesn't know what it is. Tremendous step, first step into the unknown. Can you do that? Can we do that? Pablo Neruda says, this is what it's like to have faith, and something ignited in my soul fever are unremembered wings, and I went my own way, deciphering that burning fire, and I wrote the first bare line.

[10:01]

Pure foolishness, pure wisdom. Bare line, bare without substance, pure foolishness, pure wisdom of one who knows nothing. Del que no sabe nada. If you live in South America or Central America for any time at all, you hear that every day. No sabe nada. He doesn't know anything. I don't know anything. No sé. Del que no sabe nada y vi de pronto el cielo desgranado y abierto. And suddenly I saw the heavens unfastened and opened. What's it like to take that step into our own fire? What is our own fire? I certainly don't think that the whole of existence is fire. There's a time for gentleness, a time for wateriness, for insipidness, I suppose.

[11:08]

There must be a place for everything. There's a place for lifestyles of the rich and famous somewhere in the universe. But it seems to me that at this point in our movement into the next century of our evolution, fire is there for us. Fire is at the center of this century, you know, the fireball over Hiroshima, and now those wells burning there almost mythically in the desert. You see the pictures of this Hieronymus Bosch painting of troops driving beneath these hundreds of oil wells which are burning and filling the air with black smoke. I had a line from a poem. I was out in a kayak away from land, out of sight, in a storm. And the lines at the end of the poem came through as, always this energy smolders inside when it remains unlit. Always this energy smolders inside, the energy you get from being out in a storm outside of land, just you and a paddle and a boat.

[12:11]

And about that much fiberglass between you and the briny. So always this energy smolders inside. When it remains unlit, the body fills with dense smoke. I was just in Hawaii last week. They're discovering that sutt from the desert in the upper atmosphere there above Mauna Kea. Always this energy smolders inside. When it remains unlit, the body fills with dense smoke. It seems to me that at this point there's a particular fieriness of experience which we've been unwilling to go into. And a lot of it has to do with our own grief and our own inability to be on top of things, to control things. It's almost as if we're reaching the apogee. When Challenger blew up there on primetime television, above the launching pad. It was the end of technology in some ways. The mythic event has already happened.

[13:12]

We simply have to, you know, bring it now into our bodies and understand it. But now what's the fieriness of going into both parts of the are? And one is the are of inspiration, of feeling a part of everything. The other is the are of exile, of the part of you that will never be successful. that will never get off the launching pad. And perhaps the part of us that isn't interested in getting off the launching pad. It seems to me that the soul, like water in the Tao Te Ching, follows its own course downward, irrespective of surface desires and ambitions. So let's go back into the desert 2,000 years ago, Moses before the burning bush. I've never liked Moses as a character, but for some reason that moment before the bush remains a kind of icon in my own life, that image of that, those branches taking flame.

[14:27]

And what happened in that moment, what happens for every human being when they come to that moment in our lives? It's a poem called Fire and the Earth about that moment. You remember, just in all our great spiritual experiences, when the voice of God speaks, it doesn't give you the Ten Commandments right away. It says something very strange like, take off your shoes. And you say, what? I have been 10 years on this path for take off your shoes? Oh, you're so attentive and you followed it through as Moses had, by his time out in the desert, that you looked down. And at that moment, in the Zen stories they say the monk was enlightened.

[15:32]

He looked down at your feet. To me, the moment of revelation for Moses was not seeing the burning bush, but when the voice said, take off your shoes, and he looked down and said, and he was already standing on holy ground. He was already standing in his own primary experience and had always been there the whole time. Fire in the earth, and we know When Moses was told, in the way he was told, take off your shoes, he grew pale from that simple reminder of fire in the dusty earth. He never recovered his complicated way of loving again and was free to love in the same way he felt the fire licking at his heels loved him, as if the lion earth could roar and take him in one movement. Everything he said from there, every step he took from there was carefully placed.

[16:33]

Everything he said mattered as if he knew the constant witness of the ground and remembered his own faith in the dust the moment before revelation. Since then, thousands have felt the same immobile tongue with which he tried to speak. Like the moment you too saw for the first time your own house turned to ashes. everything consumed so the road could open again, your entire presence in your eyes and the world turning slowly into a single branch of flame. And we know when Moses was told, in the way he was told, take off your shoes, he grew pale from that simple reminder of fire in the dusty earth. He never recovered his complicated way of loving again, and was free to love in the same way he felt the fire licking at his heels love to him, as if the lion earth could roar, as if the lion earth could roar and take him in one movement.

[17:44]

Every step he took from there was carefully placed. Everything he said mattered. as if he knew the constant witness of the ground and remembered his own face in the dust the moment before revelation. Since then, thousands have felt the same immobile tongue with which he tried to speak. Since then, thousands have felt the same immobile tongue with which he tried to speak. Since then, Thousands have felt the same immobile tongue with which he tried to speak, like the moment you too saw for the first time your own house turned to ashes, everything consumed, everything consumed, everything consumed so the road could open again, everything consumed so the road could open again, your entire presence in your eyes and the world turning slowly into a single branch of flame. Here's this astonishing moment of revelation where fire suddenly takes on its full physicality of presence, where you can cook over your fire, you can warm yourself, you can have fire at the center of your house as the hearth around which the family gathers.

[19:14]

But fire is also the consuming, the fire in which you, as you know it, will disappear. What a substance. Both R's in fire. The hand moves and the fire's whirling takes different shapes. All things change when we do. The first word, R, blossoms into all others. Each of them is true. There's a 3,000 mile R. 3,000 miles to get to this R. What's our own R? First of all, when we first get to our own ah, it usually sounds like, ah. And then we say, that's not enough. So we feel our lack before we felt our longing.

[20:18]

And there's nowhere to go. What would it be like, though, to give over tremendous attention to our longing, to have us pull us through that sense of lack, that you put your longing first? In fact, from all my looking at the mythic and poetic tradition, it says that you don't do the work of finding the flame, of finding your creative edge. You culture your longing. You nourish your longing. You build your longing, and then the longing does the work. The longing does the work. A tremendous gravity field that sets up. In ancient Greece, it seems like the word eros came from the ability to know what was missing in your life and then to follow it. So your erotic qualities had to do with your ability to follow what was intensely missing in your life. The gravity well of your own desire

[21:27]

And that in the end, the desire itself is enough in some ways. The fire of that desire is life, because it never ends. So normally as we take the first tentative step into this fire, the way we normally do it, and we're very used to this, we're good at it, is that we close down tighter and narrower and narrower until we get right into the middle of the flame. And we say, there, I did it. See, I'm here. Did it. I can step out again. See, anyone can do it. Kukai said, ah, went in. Says, my ah is enough. And I wrote the first bare line, pure foolishness. Literally, without body. Pura tonteria, pure foolishness, pura sabiduria, pure wisdom of one who knows nothing.

[22:39]

And certainly, I saw the heavens unfastened and open. What's this step like, going over this edge? My own experience, I discovered someone in the audience tonight who was on one of my boats in the Galapagos Islands when I worked as a guide there. How long ago now? Fifteen years ago. Astonishing. And really, in Galapagos, I feel like I served one of my apprenticeships as a poet. I think one is always serving an apprenticeship. But I think that one of the main apprenticeships a poet serves is the apprenticeship of attention, of paying attention to whatever is there. Galapagos taught me how to look at things. and let them be as they are. Zoology taught me to sort the world out. And then as the old joke goes, you get there into the wilds and you find that none of the animals have read the books that you read.

[23:44]

Took me three months before I could even let an animal just be in my vision and let it do what it wanted to do without my having investment. three months of just watching every day, every day, finally some space began to open up. But what I discovered is that there's a kind of gravity well to attention itself. In some ways, attention itself feeds the desire, feeds that flame. Because one of the reasons we turn our switches on off is because we know damn well the consequences of paying attention. That attention is actually a live connection to the world. And that when you have a live connection to the world, you have to live up to the consequences of what that world brings to you. That the world itself changes through attention. Kukai says, all things change when we do. I would say the world pays attention to us when we pay attention to it. And so numbness is a tremendous defense. There are enormous consequences simply to paying attention to the world and seeing what is there.

[24:53]

There are enormous consequences simply to paying attention to yourself. and to all the parts of us, the cross-currents we have, this vast ecology inside this vast ocean with all its cross-currents. What happens is our mind latches onto one current and we get frightened by it. That doesn't fit into social mores, or it doesn't fit into what my mother said about where I should be or what my father said, or it doesn't fit into my family, it doesn't fit into my religion, these vast currents. And they seem to overwhelm us because we seem to have lost our breath to open up as we go in and accept the whole oceanic experience inside, the whole fire, the whole ecology. It's almost as if we will only choose parts of ourselves. I only like this part. As if we look at a rainforest and say, I will only accept the panther part of myself. I only like the panther in the rainforest. All the rest can go. It's just backdrop. Panther leaps on other things, eats them. It's the top of the food chain. I like it.

[25:54]

feel safe there, literally the top of the tree. Very hard for us to come to terms with the leaf mold, the leaf mold part of ourselves that eats other things, that makes failures out of things we want to be successful at. That slowly eats away and recycles you into other experiences, into other lives, into other relationships, into other places. I often say it's almost as if we were to say, or you were to hear someone saying, listen, I like going out of my house at night for the first part of the month when the moon is growing, but I refuse to go out in the last half of the month when the moon is getting smaller. waning, and I will not go out at all when there is no moon at all. We think this is very strange, wouldn't we?

[26:59]

So why don't we think that we're very strange when we look at ourselves and say that? Look at our world. We have these vast monocultures out in the prairie where the topsoil is being washed out into the Gulf of Mexico. In some ways, the interior soil, you know, we have these two words, soul and soil. The fertile elements of the soil, of the soul, are washing away from inside us. Because we plant our identity inside as a monoculture, I am this. First word, ah. Blossoms into all others. Each of them is true. What's hard about that is when you step through and you do that, ah, you go, ah. It's all the grief of the ways you cannot step through come up at the same time. Here's a poem about that grieving side of ourselves. What's it like to say that's enough too?

[28:03]

I'll step into the waning side of myself too. I'll step into that ah, that fiery ah too. Paul Morrow called faith. I want to write about faith. I want to write about faith, about the way the moon rises over cold snow night after night. I want to write about faith, about the way the moon rises over cold snow night after night, faithful even in its fading from fullness. Faithful even in its fading from fullness, slowly becoming that last curving and impossible slither of light before the final darkness. But I have no faith myself. I do not give it the smallest entry. Let this then, my small poem, like a new moon, slender and barely open, be the first prayer that opens me to faith. Let this then, let this then, my small poem, like a new moon slender and barely open, be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

[29:13]

I want to write about faith. And you're starting a poem on faith, and people have been writing about faith for 3,000 years. In fact, even 3,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, the library shelves of Alexandria were groaning under the weight of books about faith. You get your foot in the door, and whatever way you can, you say, I want to write about faith. There's your first line. No one can dispute it. You want to write about faith. So what have you got? And then suddenly, this strange image of the moon I want to write about faith, about the way the moon rises over cold snow night after night, faithful even in its fading from fullness, faithful even in its fading from fullness, faithful even in its fading. There's a fire. Step into that fire. Faithful even in its fading from fullness, slowly becoming at last curving and impossible slither of light before the final darkness.

[30:34]

But I have no faith myself. I do not give it the smallest entry. Let this then, my small form, like a new moon, slender and barely open, be the first prayer that opens me to faith. This concludes Side A. Please turn the tape over for Side B. I hear a poem like this, and what I feel is a tremendous weight, but a weight in the sense of a gravity pole. That this part of us, our desire is connected to our grief also. And that enormous part of the soul wants to go, wants the body to meet it and the mind to meet it in that well of grief. It's the wound part, you know, the fire of the wound, the red wound. And the wound is literally the place where you are open to the world. Think about it, or feel about it.

[31:37]

You know that sudden vulnerability that comes one moment, you're invulnerable, and the next, bang. Like that black football player a couple of years back, who just died last week actually. in a major league football player, paralyzed just in a tackle playing. What is that part of the world? And in some ways it happens to all of us. Each one of us here has our own particular way of dying to meet. Each one of us is going to die in our own way. When you talk about your own choices in life, and if we are seeing the soul, and I went my own way deciphering that burning fire. You know, think about that one. you suddenly find that if you've only got panther consciousness, if you can only look at the top of the tree, if you can only look at the part of you that is growing at any one time, that you have to learn how to look at the other part in one enormous rush, almost like a tidal wave at the end of your life.

[32:48]

And often it's too much for people. Which is why we have tremendous administration of sedatives at this time. The grief can be just so enormous with no faculty or facilities to deal with that grief. You've been immortal in control or numbed enough to think one is in control for all one's life and suddenly you have to learn how to limp. And you have never allowed yourself to limp. Pull my rope, call a mask of death, about this last moment, which in some ways is really every moment. From the hospital bed you look back on the world of life, and already the only words you speak are the ones rehearsed by heart.

[33:58]

From the hospital bed you look back on the world of life and already the only words you speak are the ones rehearsed by heart. And the face rising from the white sheets around your feet is the face for which you have waited. His eyes are strong. His cheeks are hollow. His lips are strong and his cheekbones are dark and still. It is the face of all you have not known. It is the face of all you have not known staring through the strange hollow inside you that refused before to know the pain. Yes, you are chilled, and the small child he were a moment before slips his frightened eyes beneath the sheets. but with the small gesture of love that is left to you. Put your left arm around the small child's shoulder and with the other lift yourself slowly towards those eyes and as you feel through the distance that cannot make you falter, the bones of his cheeks as yours and your empty eyes look inward on the griefs you would not know.

[35:03]

You will want no other vision. You will want no other vision. You will want no other vision and find on your own lips the first smile on the face of death that will lead you to your joy. Yes, you are chilled and a small child you were a moment before slips his frightened eyes beneath the sheets. but with the small gesture of love that is left to you, slip your left arm around the small child's shoulder, and with your other, raise yourself slowly toward those eyes, and as you feel through the distance that cannot make you falter, the bones of his cheeks as yours, and your empty eyes look inward on the grief you would not know. You will want no other vision. You will want no other vision and find on your own lips the first smile on the face of death that would lead you to your joy. So it's this moment that the strategic side of it is terrified of, terrified.

[36:17]

The part that's arranging things So you'll get through unscathed. The wish is for immunity. Somehow if you keep your head low, you'll get through and coast through those pension years. And at the end, well, who knows? Getting to the bottom of the well. Here's a poem for the bottom of the well. The bottom of the bottomless well. How's it feel like poems are like stones drop down wells. You wait for the splash and it never comes. Carried on traveling and you go with it. Poem buries itself in the body.

[37:20]

And maybe a month later you hear a splash while you're doing something else. Rilke, that splash, one of the ways he described it, he says, For there is no part of life that is not looking at you. For there is no part of the world that is not looking at you. You must change your life. So here's a poem of following that desire down and finding that it's attached to the grief, that there's no way of following one's desire without opening up to the places where we're just hung together, stuck together, barely holding on. And now in some ways that part of us is never redeemable. And in some ways it doesn't want to be redeemed. It's the part of the universe that eats other things. It's the part of the universe that recycles other things.

[38:25]

It's the failed part of the universe that says, here I am, this is my failure. No one else can fail in this way. Thomas Edison, when he was trying to find the filament for the light bulb, he had men working thousands of hours. They came to him at the end of his months of work. They couldn't find the substance that wouldn't burn out. Again, another metaphor of flame here, this light, to bring light. And they came to him and they said, look, we've worked a thousand hours. We've done a thousand experiments, all to no avail. Wasted time. And Thomas Edison said, nonsense, we know a thousand ways in which it doesn't work. Which is probably the only thing we'll be able to say with satisfaction on that deathbed. And someone says, Grandma or Grandpa, what was it all about? You say, there are a thousand ways in which it doesn't work. A thousand ways. We're conservative here. We're conservative. I'm up to about 1,500 already.

[39:28]

There are a thousand ways it doesn't work. There's someone who could walk into the wounded part of himself, Thomas Edison. The poem is called The Well of Grief. And a strange occurrence happened halfway through the poem. It's just a small poem. They're the worst as you're writing them. Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief, those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief, turning down through its black water to the place we cannot breathe, will never know the source from which we drink the secret water cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those who wish for something else. Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief, turning down through its black water to the place we cannot breathe, will never know the source from which we drink.

[40:44]

The secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those who wished for something else. When I first saw those gold coins, the image, the physical image of them in my body, in the well, the strategic mind came in immediately. It was scared to death. It sensed its own imminent demise. And what it said was, out gold coins, image of gold coins. I am writing a poem about grief and you give me gold coins. Get out. You are standing between me and the Pulitzer. On the freeway as you're going to Marin County, I have this image of these signs. You know those signs? It says, caution, buses merging at high speed from right.

[41:47]

Have you seen those signs? I got this image immediately, and it was, caution, strategic mind merging at high speed from right. So I just let it go. Just got the Doppler effect. As it went past. Because these were my coins that I had thrown down over all the years. And the old cultures where everyone's immersed in water at one time or another during their life as an initiation. It's in the Christian tradition, it's in most of the great traditions. You go back into the womb, you go back into wetness, into fluidity, the place you cannot breathe. And then you appear again, born anew. Now many of us are lucky if we just get the dab on the forehead. But for most of us, the experience is that we come to the well and we throw coins down. And we make a wish.

[42:49]

And the wish is that you do not have to go down yourself. The wish is for immunity from life. We want the fire that warms, but... We refuse the fire that burns. And in some ways, you know, if our joy comes from the fire that warms, we've locked ourselves away from our joy because it's the same side of the, it's just another side of the coin of the grief. And because we will not feel our grief fully, our full joy is also held from us in some way. Not because the world is a bad place, but just because the world is made that way. The way we're tested against the world is in our very voice itself. And if you think about the voice, it's this tremendous way of paying attention to the world in that it's one's way of meeting the world, of becoming the world.

[43:50]

If you think about the way we resonate the air inside our bodies, and then we resonate it through our throat and out through the mouth into the air, until the shape of the air inside the body becomes the same as the shape of the air outside, the resonance. You're literally making the world become one. But somewhere along the line we become ashamed of the sounds we make in the world. Here's a poem about that. It's called The Fire in the Song. on my next book. The mouth opens and fills the air with its vibrant shape. The mouth opens. Ah, The mouth, ah, the mouth opens and fills the air with its vibrant shape until the air and the mouth become one shape and the first word, your own word, surprises, burns, grieves you now because you made that pact with a dark presence in your life.

[45:05]

He said, if you'll only stop singing, I'll make you safe. And he repeated the line, I'll make you safe, knowing you would hear it as a comforting sound of a door closed on the fear at last. but his darkness crept under your tongue and became the dim cave where you sheltered when you grew in that small place, too frightened to remember the songs of the world, its impossible notes, and the sweet joy that flew out the door of your wild mouth as you spoke. The mouth opens and fills the air with its vibrant shape until the air and the mouth become one shape and the first word, your own word, spoken from that fire, surprises, burns, breathes you now because you made that pact with a dark presence in your life.

[46:18]

He said, if you'll only stop singing, if you'll only, if you'll only stop singing, if you'll only stop singing, if you'll only stop singing, I'll make you safe. And he repeated the line, I'll make you safe, knowing you would hear it as the comforting sound of a door closed on the fear at last. But his darkness crept under your tongue and became the dim cave where you sheltered and you grew in that small place, too frightened to remember the songs of the world, the songs of the world, too frightened to remember the songs of the world, its impossible notes, and the sweet joy that flew out the door of your wild mouth as you spoke. And the sweet joy that flew out the door of your wild mouth as you spoke.

[47:25]

And the sweet joy, the sweet joy, the sweet joy, the sweet joy that flew out the door of your wild mouth as you spoke. You know, the monocultural view of the identity, what we tend to do as we grow into experience is we feel we have to leave our innocence behind, our innocence behind, instead of weaving our innocence into our growing experience. Blake maintains you never left your innocence behind. Part of being a twice-born man or woman, that's Blake's phrase, a twice-born man, was the ability to keep your innocence and vitality alive as you became more experienced. That you did not choose, you did not choose between them.

[48:30]

Here's a poem where I look at an innocent question. Innocent question, is there one god or many gods? People have died for this innocent question. It's a poem called Self-Portrait. I wrote it after I'd read a marvelous biography of Van Gogh, David Sweetman. Van Gogh, his life and art, or the life and art of Van Gogh, I can't remember. I saw all these marvelous self-portraits. The great thing about Van Gogh's portraits is they're not confessional paintings, just as we have confessional poems or confessional paintings. They're poems of tremendous attention on the world. When you see Van Gogh's own face, the whole world is included in it. So I thought, well, what's it like to write an equivalent self-portrait? This poem is about innocence and experience, and it's myself looking in the mirror. And I start with the question, this supposedly great theological question, and heretically I say, it doesn't interest me if there's one God or many gods.

[49:54]

What I want to know It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods. I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned, if you can know despair or see it in others. It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods. I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned, if you can know despair or see it in others. I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world with its harsh need to change you. Know that one. I want to know if you're prepared to live in the world with this harsh need to change you if you can look back with firm eyes saying, this is where I stand. I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living, falling toward the center of your longing. I want to know if you are willing to live day by day with the consequence of love and the bitter, unwanted passion of your sure defeat. I want to know If you are willing to live with the consequence of love, the consequence of love, are you willing to live with the consequence of love and the bitter, unwanted passion of your sure defeat?

[51:08]

I have heard in that fierce embrace, even the gods speak of God. It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods. I'm giving a lecture later this year at a theological chair at a Catholic monastery. I'm going to start with this poem. When I open my eyes, half the room will have laughed. It doesn't interest me if there's one God or many gods. I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned. That felt like a real question to me to ask myself. That felt real. I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned, if you can know despair or see it in others. If you can know despair or see it in others, I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world.

[52:13]

Are you prepared to live in the world with its harsh need to change you? If you can look back with firm eyes saying, this is where I stand. This is where I stand. I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living, falling toward the center of your longing. I want to know if you are willing to live day by day with the consequence of love, with the consequence of love and the bitter, unwanted passion of your sure defeat. I have heard in that fierce embrace, in that I have heard in that fierce embrace, even the gods speak of God." I felt a tremendous revelation about my own innocence in this poem because it took a tremendous kind of innocent courage to ask that question in that way or to dismiss that question.

[53:14]

In some ways, one of our great defenses against true spiritual experience is to ask a spiritual question in the wrong way. So that the question's out on the periphery here. And we say, shall I choose this or shall I choose that? And we use tremendous amounts of energy and tremendous amounts of time on behalf of the strategic mind trying to figure out this. How many angels dance on the head of a pin? Is there one God or many gods? And yet the bodily experience of that question looks very different when it gets back here. And it's only there where there's a real answer somehow, where the two questions kind of meet at the center of the circle. It doesn't interest me if there's one God or many gods. I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned. My innocence there in some ways, the revelation I felt in my own innocence was the revelation of my own experience. What would that innocence be like to say my own experience is enough? Never mind this great theological question, and yet somehow to get to a real answer at the bottom of it.

[54:18]

It doesn't interest me if there's one God or many gods. I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned, if you can know despair or see it in others. I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world with this harsh need to change you. If you can look back with firm eyes saying, this is where I stand, this here, here is where I stand. This is where I stand. This is where I stand. I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living, falling toward the center of your longing. I want to know if you are willing to live day by day with the consequence of love and the bitter, unwanted passion of your sure defeat. Rilke said, winning does not tempt that man. This is how he grows, by being defeated decisively by greater and greater beings.

[55:22]

Winning does not tempt that man. This is how he grows, by being defeated decisively by greater and greater beings. No question of escaping defeat, Rilke says. The only question is, can you be defeated by something greater each time? Or are you allowing yourself to be nibbled at right up to your death bed? Are you allowing yourself to be gummed to death by someone? There are huge amounts, enormous numbers of people being gummed to death. My friend Michael Mead says, What happens is you wear pastel colors and retire to Florida. That's the equivalent of being gummed to death. Are you prepared to live in the world with its harsh need to change you?

[56:25]

And you look back with firm eyes saying, this is where I stand. I want to know if you know how to mount into that fierce heat of living. Have you built the facility? How do you build that facility? Falling toward the center of your longing. I want to know if you're willing to live day by day with the consequence of love and the bitter, unwanted passion of your sure defeat. I have heard in that fierce embrace, in that fierce embrace, even the gods speak of God. So we started earlier with the image of Moses, and I want to finish with the image of Moses. A poem I wrote called The Opening of Eyes, which is really a poem about my own experience, burning brush experience on the Welsh hills.

[57:38]

I was triggered by a poem written by R.S. Thomas, a Welsh poet who lived not far from where I lived. a poem called The Bright Field, where he probably, he's a pastor of a church, he probably came out of his church and saw this light moving across the hills as it does there. Clouds come off the Irish Sea. And he said, that's it. Like all pastors, he got tired of talking. He said, that's it. You just see that in a moment. That's it. That's the burning bush. That light, that moment. There. Ah. Ah. Ah. That reminded me of my own experience, and I wrote this. There's the image of taking off your shoes here, too. That day I saw beneath dark clouds the passing light over the water. That day I saw beneath dark clouds the passing light over the water, and I heard the voice of the world speak out. I knew then, as I had before, life is no passing memory of what has been, nor the remaining pages in a great book waiting to be read.

[58:45]

it is the opening of eyes long closed it is the vision of far-off things seen for the silence they hold it is the heart it is the heart after years of secret conversing speaking out loud in the clear air it is Moses in the desert fallen to his knees before the lit bush it is the man throwing away his shoes as if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished, opened at last, fallen in love with solid ground. It is the opening of eyes long closed. It is the opening of eyes long closed. It is a vision of far-off things seen for the silence they hold, for the silence they hold. It is a vision of far-off things seen for the silence they hold.

[59:47]

It is the heart, it is the heart after years of secret conversing, after years of secret conversing, after years, after years and years and years. Years and years and years of secret conversing speaking out loud in the clear air It is Moses in the desert Fallen to his knees before the lit bush It is the man throwing away his shoes as if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished astonished Opened at last, fallen in love with solid ground. Solid ground. It's a man throwing away his shoes as if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished. Opened at last, fallen in love with solid ground. Solid ground. Thank you.

[60:56]

This concludes Images of Fire, Creativity and Personal Passion with David White. If you would like additional copies of this recording or a complete catalog of transformational audio tapes, please call Sounds True 303-449-6229 or write 735 Walnut Street, Boulder, Colorado 80302.

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