Poetics of Mind

The theme for today is "Poetics of Mind".

When I was young I liked poetry
and the whole way it was given
which came in the form of nursery rhymes and kids books
where everything rhymed and had rhythm
that went right along with what my moving limbs
and tapping feet already wanted to do.

But then I "set aside childish things"
and disciplined my body too
(to fit in at school and be a "good student")
and came to prefer the language of
prose and description.

Poetry for adults seemed obscure and confusing.
Give me definitive statements, precise and unambiguous!

Later (and it's a long story) I came back to poetics,
not as a language production or literary form
but as an practice that might reveal - or express -
a larger view of human nature.

Over the course of time,
humans have evolved a dual consciousness
like a pyramid or an iceberg
the base is a primal consciousness shared with animals
and the tip is language consciousness.

It's still just one iceberg / pyramid / mountain.

But the whole gets distorted
if all the attention and development goes to the top
even if this is a triumph of culture and civilization.
 
"Lose your mind and come to your senses!"
and countless other slogans
including the Eastern-religious flavored versions
that come with "mindfulness"
are a call for balance and wholeness
not anti-intellectualism.

When we think or talk it's usually organized by metaphors
that focus us on some aspects of how things are
and ignore others.

A previous theme was "The Circle", a metaphor for Self
which carried the idea of inside and outside,
and the suggestion that a Self could get outside the circle.
Or, perhaps, the Self IS the circle.

This is a fairly individualistic metaphor.

By now have a big supply
of "Look within!" advice and slogans.
But that "inside" includes many "outsides"
a Community of Others -- a world
the actuality of them, in a certain real sense
even if rational philosophy says they are "only images".

But (what if) there's more to it than that ...

Meditation and many awareness practices
seek to reinstate the wholeness of the "pyramid"
through the unifying effect of flexible and open awareness.

This also happens in the practice of poetics
with more focus on the language level.

According to poet Allen Ginsberg:

Real poetry practitioners are practitioners of mind awareness, or practitioners of reality, expressing their fascination whth a phenomenal universe and trying to penetrate to the heart of it.  ... Classical poetry is a "process", or experiment - a probe into the nature of reality and the nature of the mind.

You need a certain deconditioning of attitude - a deconditioning of rigidity and unyieldingness - so that you can get to the heart of your own thought.  That's parallel with traditional Buddhist ideas of renunciation - renunciation of hand-me-down conditioned conceptions of mind ... it requires cultivation of tolerance toward one's own thoughts and impuleses and ideas - the tolerance necessary for the perception of one's own mind, the kindness to the self necessary for acceptance of that process of consciousness and for acceptance of the mind's raw contents.

This a background,
a way of understanding mindfulness and wholeness
where language consciousness and primal consciousness come together
in everyday life.

We are all "poets of life"
naturally trying to extend that "art"

when we look "within" and unfold awareness of all that is "there"

when we try to see what's really going on in the world

to know what minds and hearts
need for health
or desire for fulfulment

to open up to rich and deep relationships

or to say things that make good sense

because doing so is part of defining and also becoming
a Self
that is not a small circle.

What do you enjoy
and find curious about
being a natural poet and artist?