Light on the Page

The Republic of The Soul

In tragedy, in epic, in comedy, in poetry, the soul twists and turns, waiting for the gyration which will produce happiness. The soul is a great republic which needs its benign rulership. Plato wanted to ban poetry from his ideal republic. This wasn’t because it was disturbing or subversive but because it stood, in his view, three stages removed from truth itself. He saw it as an imitation of an imitation of the real. We may be indignant at this proposal to banish something which – in our estimation – enriches life, but on the other hand we might also be able to admire a worldview which has at its heart such a pure vision of virtue and truth that everything else must seem like unenlightened agitation.

There is certainly something in this. Nine tenths of life is played out on the level of drama which might or might not yield self-awakening. It’s almost impossible to conceive of one’s own life in terms of genuine enlightenment or a vision of the good. But the moment comes in the midst of it all when a clear light appears – fleetingly – before the inner eye. In that second the light works retrospectively and illumines all those gyrations of destiny which lie in the past. The way I see it is this: the moment of light is like the end of a giant archway which reaches up into the sky, into the past, disappearing for a time, but having its other end at a point in some distant epoch – perhaps in the time of Plato or some other period of particular importance to your soul. This presumes, of course, that the soul has existed prior to birth and has probably enjoyed (if that’s the right word) many other lifetimes. In other words there is a clear true path, symbolized by light, overarching all of our existence.

In this sense poetry, tragedy, comedy, epic are all expendable. The truth which illumines our existence is all-important. It’s like the light which reaches down and floods the dark streets of our soul with radiance. The republic of the soul.

The Republic of The Soul

Whether I stand in forum or temple

I will always need light to live by.

There is reflected light on trees and paths

which also works into my shaded thoughts.

But light itself in its own bright name

holds converse in the forum and is etched

upon the temple’s architrave unseen

except by those who’ve woken from dark’s pain.

And though we twist and turn in tragedy,

like actors on the world’s stage – our lives

blended in with shadows, pierced with pain -

yet light is still the source from which we spring.

My own Republic of the heart and mind

will not be ruled by anything but this:

the light which set me on my path of life,

the source which makes the shadows burn like flame.

Only the effort is lacking to make

the goal, of light which shines back on the path.

And here is my soul, the living city,

whose streets are dark, waiting for my brightness.

The world too has only one chance at light

and must turn to it now or lose its self.

Then where are the souls who will master time

and reach back to where life’s archway began?

Best wishes, today,

Landar

Picture: The School of Athens, by Raphael

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

Source: www.lightonthepage.com

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Creation Starts With Year One

There is a way for the world to be in the future – to embrace being – and really it starts now. It is the way of creativity or creation. Essentially it is the only way: either our planet takes up its place as a shining star in space or it becomes, over time, a dead and barren moon. Human beings will decide this – not atoms, molecules, gravity or fusion. These forces follow patterns of thought not the other way round. The vexed question of what ’2012′ means and the end of the Mayan calendar – a question which will still be asked in ten years time – concerns this: Creation always starts with the year One.

There are two ways of working – the way of the living star or of the barren moon – and both have to do with the human brain. This is also a question of illusion. When we wake up in the morning we return to waking consciousness and the functions of the brain. In sleep, in night-time consciousness, we were free of this and able to experience the world of light on its own terms, albeit unconsciously. During the hour of twilight we come down towards the earth again, knowing it to be the great field of creation. I always think the dawn chorus – so strong in spring – is the supreme symbol of creation, the purest expression of natural praise. And then we wake, and very quickly find ourselves locked in the brain again, with all its illusions of worldly truth.

The brain itself is also a function of creation but it can operate in the two ways mentioned above. It can trap us in its pathways, in its grey folds – in which case our thoughts become moonlike. Or it can serenely open to reveal the heart of being, where birdsong begins and creation receives its praise. This is a question of orientation and openness – of attitude towards creativity. It is what will sustain or destroy the planet. In a sense the brain is merely like a curtain: it can ripple with thoughts and remain closed or it can open slowly to reveal the light behind.

This is where we stand now in the year 2012 – or the year One. This is the meaning of the new consciousness: always Creation and creativity. It lies within our capacities to open up the pathways of the brain. We need to stand ready and prepared for this adjustment, for this opening. It’s something which happens by itself and which we cause to happen by our openness, by our loving praise and dawn chorus. It’s not as obvious as it seems: ’2012′ is something you do and therefore a moral event. At the same time – as I believe – the brain itself is undergoing an evolution. For those who don’t change their calendars in this way, the question will still be there in ten or a hundred years time. It’s true also that the world is like a brain in its own right: if we will let it, it will take up its post in space as equal thinker with the shining stars.

All life imitates the dawn of creation.

Dream transposes it into another key,

redolent with early birdsong. Waking

involves us in illusion to the very fingertips.

The brain itself is a curtain between worlds,

sometimes rippling with thoughts, other times

serenely opening to reveal the heart of being,

where birdsong begins and creation receives its praise.

And then again the world itself is brain,

with people and their actions for its thoughts.

Now all our hope of progress lies in this,

that our one world takes up its post in space

as equal thinker with the shining stars,

no more compacted greyly in itself

but opened as a living bowl of light,

with people whose creation starts again.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

Source: www.lightonthepage.com

For other permissions please contact the author.

Imprint

The poem says it all. Then any commentary comes to seem superfluous. But here it is, in the nature of a conversation. Even to talk about spirit, higher truth, inner being, is an unwieldy process. We seem to wake up to words, in the morning, instead of to being. A stream of words – and among those words your own name. This is my feeling anyway. And in the course of using words, as a poet, I arrive back at spirit, at being. For me, then, the inner being is a conscious, living, indisputable fact. And strange to say it is the person who writes as well as the person who is discovered by writing. This is the strange anomaly I find in my work: I am teacher and taught, creator and created. Therefore while I would like to speak and write as a teacher, authoritatively, I can only acknowledge that I am also a pupil, learning.

The best part of myself speaks to the best part of you. It is here and not here, just as yours is here and not here. This is the conversation. It is a conversation of spirit, between inner voice and inner ears. It can lift right off the page if we will allow it. And that is what I wanted to say to you today.

Imprint

The cold stream of words before dawn
continues, muttering, on its way.
I hear my name mentioned. From time to time
I dip my hands in. Sometimes I reach them up
to my face. Then, with a shock,
I am awake in my sleep, or sleeping awake.
Dreams are stones in the stream. The words
are everything. Day will come. The day
will come when all our names will change,
when all the words we speak will be
strange, unrecognizable truths. I want to wake up
on that day.

-                        And when I stop all my forming
I am still a formed thing, and the flow
continues in me, through me, without cessation.
How much I want to be that form and to leave it!
The one which set the stream in motion.
To be it, to start again. To leave it,
to flow out into the world unconstrained.
The terrible burden of self is to be and to make
an imprint. A man
wakes this way, a woman
regards the imprint with pity.

With pity, yet she rushes in to fill it.
We can’t fill in all the world’s imprints
and some must remain, gathering water,
containing drought. These have resort to
poetry, which finds creator and created
united in the same form, with one standing
slightly apart from the other, and shining,
like a ghost.

-                          Or spirit, which is the same
thing, but unwieldy in the mind. The most
you can say for spirit is that it is
an empty fullness which proceeds ahead of us,
an extraordinary guide whose liquid footprints
will not succumb to drought or rain.
This teacher – without the difficulty of words -
will find your shape, will reach up with your hands,
above dreams, above dawn, neither sleeping
nor waking, but embodying all it is.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

Photo by Ilan Shacham

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

Source: www.lightonthepage.com

For other permissions please contact the author.

Crow

I wrote this small piece for my friends at Evolver (drop in to Evolver.net if you have a chance) and was surprised by how passionately people feel about these birds. Here’s the interesting thing: the crow seems to have a different significance for each individual, perhaps more than any other creature. They are emblems, myths, symbols, omens, delights and just plain birds, along with many other things. Should we let them be? Not until the day comes when we can let our own humanity be..

CROW

~The crows are bearers of light and hope and promise. Each and every one lifts straw or twigs to the nest. When is a crow silent? When it is building. Sunlight flashes on the underside of their wings. They slalom miraculously through the branches. They career round corners of the wind. The treetops are eager for them, bursting into the upper light. There is genius in their working – magical, canvas-filling skill. In what sphere did they learn their gifts? The god of crows is living here and now. I stand in its presence, a pupil of origins, groping for words to express its being. There is no other prayer worth raising on this day. Crow.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

Source: www.lightonthepage.com

For other permissions please contact the author.

Into The Dark

The poet must carve a path out of the world’s stone that leads up to the word of God. And this without knowing whether his words have the fine engraved edges of words in a monument or the movement you see in the travelling stars or opening flowers. In a child’s first footsteps. How much we don’t know! The world is the scope of our ignorance. Life in the world is a magnifying lens which focuses my ignorance into speech.

My door into the dark is carved in stone, like the eastern door in a great cathedral, inset with row after row of fantastical carvings. It’s the door of ignorance and knowing. My feet take me there, having passed through wonder and the praise of wonder. I am required to be the light.

But neither is this the word of God. Is it the passage in or the passage out? Only if speech says so. Is it the achievement of feet, standing, walking, from infancy to old age? But I’ve walked into the dark since my light was first sparked from earth’s heavenly beginning. So far beyond the keenly engraved boundaries of this life!

The laughter is a memorial too, carved in life’s eternal present. Those letters are pleasing to contemplate. Why, the world is itself a monument, with names of the fallen on its million faces.

I don’t wish to be merely mystical or poetic-sounding. There is a fine focus to these words. A fine engraving, a carving, leading up to the word of God. But it lies in the magnification of ignorance, the pattern of speech, the regulation of feet. These wonders, these songs of praise, let me be the light as I go, through the door of each day, into the dark.

To go into the dark and be light

is my qualified belief. Qualified

by the achievement of feet – their feat

in bringing me this far, from the first urge

to walk, up to the realization

that I’ve walked into the dark since my light

was sparked from earth’s heavenly beginning.

And the entrance is my eastern door,

cathedral-carved from dark’s quiescent stone.

The laughter is a memorial too,

carved in life’s eternal present – letters

considered in pleasing contemplation.

Wider skies than this I can’t conceive.

The world is itself a monument

with names of the fallen on its million faces.

I know this, remembering while I know

that love will carve its name into my stone.

Wonder is there in the travelling stars,

in the opening flower, in the infant’s

first steps. But this is not the word of God,

only His eyes widening in delight.

The word is growth in growth and not that too -

it is praise and the wonderment of praise,

it is the full scope of my ignorance

magnified by the world’s lens into speech.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved.

Image: Pythagoras from Chartres Cathedral

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

Source: www.lightonthepage.com

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Dawn Before Dawn

The word of resurrection hurts the ears. Somehow at this time of year – before the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox – no matter what religion you are, something strains in you, in the hour before dawn, to know if it is going to be allowed to walk the world again. Before, before, before – and after.  The hour before dawn – when pre-dawn and dawn mix their bloods – is the time when the body listens for its name. It listens in that eternal mixture of humor and despair which is its lot.

I return to this theme every year. It’s important to know if the body is going to go on. It’s important – magical – to name the wonderful sequence of cosmic events – full moon, equinox, day of rest – that signal resurrection. It’s important to ask, no matter what religion you belong to, because the body itself wants to know. And it’s a word which hurts the ears because, each year, there is no certainty that the victory has been won until the cosmos declares it.

According to the materialistic narrative, which science has largely adopted, the body dissolves after death and there’s an end to it. Yes, no doubt. But a larger science – also an empirical one – hears the voices calling out before: before dawn, before creation, before I am. It senses the humor and despair. It allows the absurd question because the body – physical matter – itself is asking it: is there a resurrection for me? Then comes the other question of course – how am I, as an individual human being, involved in the process of resurrection? That’s a narrative for another day when, perhaps, I’ve gained in wisdom.

The hour of paralysis and cold dream,

the hour of dawn before dawn. I will not

use words to unwrinkle returning self,

to declare the body an empty stage.

But I will ask who sends me to perform

and why it is that concentration coils

my words into untoward shapes, like trees

which have borne more springs than they care to name.

Yet there is a name, a sound, an I am,

even before dawn and pre-dawn mix their bloods.

It’s a name for worlds and their opposites,

un-creation – enough to make me rise.

Nothing can break the unformed flower’s despair,

nothing can entertain its humor but

resurrection before the act. In name,

in sound, in dawning I am, day returns.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

Image: Equinox Stone, Loughcrew, Ireland

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

Source: www.lightonthepage.com

For other permissions please contact the author.