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#2327 - Tuesday, November
29, 2005 - Editor: Jerry Katz
This issue of The Nondual Highlights features selections from Speaking Through the Opening: Allowing Your Life to be Your Poem, by Eric Ashford. http://www.palabras-press.com/ However, I'm going to do something unusual in this presentation of John's poetry. I find that within the poems are brief, intense, remarkable lines that stand out like shocking lights. I have unscrewed some of those lights from the larger poems and I only hope Eric doesn't mind!
"Eric Ashford goes to a new place of consciousness that we are only now exploring. He consistently has what I call 'Rumi Moments,' where time stops and you look inside and see the beauty that cannot be spoken, though Eric has just spoken it. You look up from the page, smile and shake your head and let go, savouring for a few moments, before returning to the magic of his words." --John MacEnulty
Eric Ashford lives in England. He is a poet who believes that poetry is an authentic spiritual path in its own right. Writing poetry is contemplative, healing and a way of self-realization. He would also say that poetic self-expression is how we choose to view and become the art of our own life.
~ ~ ~
This book explores in 200 poems, the many ways that we can become the poetic expression of our souls. It touches upon the highs and lows of this "art of living" that is our individual path to self-awareness. It is my hope that the readers will come to realize their divine potential to live optimally from the poetry of their souls--to live from a deeper source of their creative light--and to come to know that his very life that we lead is the poem we allow ourselves to write.
~ ~ ~
When you do not know your words
and cannot name them,
then you are in season,
Then you are heavy
with something new to say.
You are pregnant like the sky is when full of rain.
~ ~ ~
When a poem speaks to you
it's as if you just spoke to yourself.
~ ~ ~
Black-inked words fall on snow fields.
Poems arrive like thunder out of a clear blue sky.
No one here is looking.
There is only the poem
looking at itself.
~ ~ ~
Place one foot here and one foot there
and wait for the big picture to appear.
~ ~ ~
Write every poem quickly
even if it takes you a lifetime.
~ ~ ~
You have endless amazing talents
but, until you love to reveal them,
nothing real can be said.
~ ~ ~
Find that one thing that feels
as if God is making love to you.
Undress yourself in the dark to be that light.
~ ~ ~
...let the wheel turn in your hands
and force nothing.
~ ~ ~
When you employ no safety net
and carry no provisions,
you arrive at real destinations.
~ ~ ~
A hermit crab leaves home for a moment,
becomes breakable,
and bursts into travelling music.
~ ~ ~
Poems are trails that show you
where you were hunted down and killed.
~ ~ ~
Some poets go beachcombing until late
kicking over old rocks
to see where the sea went.
~ ~ ~
Breathe for a while and
wait to hear what became of you.
~ ~ ~
Speaking Through the Opening: Allowing Your Life to be Your Poem, by Eric Ashford.