David Whyte Wednesday - What to Remember When Waking

WHAT TO REMEMBER WHEN WAKING

by David Whyte from The House of Belonging (Many Rivers Press)

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
to which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.

What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.

What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.

To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.

Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love?  What shape
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?

Waking is an interesting process.  When I was working a 9-5 job in an office not located in the corner of my bedroom, I would be wide awake and engaged in the day as soon as I opened my eyes.  Whether my body sprung or oozed out of bed, my brain would start scrolling through the "to do" list like the roller on a player piano and I'd be caught up in a pre-programmed melody. 

Now that I'm the composer of my days, waking is a different process.  My eyes still tend to open as the first rays of dawn creep through my bedroom window; but rather than rushing into the future of musts, shoulds and needs, my mind lingers in that liminal place between sleeping and waking.  I try to recall the secrets of my sleep-- the images, stories and sensations that I've experienced in the dark so I can carry a touchstone of that wildly imaginative and wonder-full world into my day.  Or, as David Whyte says, "To remember the other world in this world is your true inheritance." 

For me, remembering this other world lets me look at the blank page as something full of possibility rather than just another thing that must be filled before the day ends and the whole routine starts over again.  True, there are things that I have "to do," but somehow those become less tedious impositions and more moments of mindfulness when I am able to remember.


What does the blank page hold for you today? 

Tomorrow morning, try to see what you remember when waking.