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To support the development of this site and the work of soul friendship you are invited to express your appreciation through the spiritual practice of Dana

Radiant Poem

THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS

by: W. B. Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand, and hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing, and moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
and caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
but something rustled on the floor, and some one called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

'The Song of Wandering Aengus' is reprinted from An Anthology of Modern Verse. Ed. A. Methuen. London: Methuen & Co., 1921.

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This painting is based on La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, lone and palely loitering? The sedge has wither’d from the lake, and no birds sing.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms! so haggard and so woe-begone? The squirrel’s granary is full, and the harvest’s done.

I see a lily on thy brow with anguish moist and fever dew, 
and on thy cheeks a fading rose. Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
full beautiful—a faery’s child,
her hair was long, her foot was light, and her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
and bracelets too, and fragrant zone; she look’d at me as she did love, and made sweet moan. 

I set her on my pacing steed,
and nothing else saw all day long, for sidelong would she bend, and sing a faery’s song.

She found me roots of relish sweet, and honey wild, and manna dew, and sure in language strange she said—
“I love thee true.”

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore,  and there I shut her wild wild eyes with kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide! the latest dream I ever dream’d  on the cold hill’s side.

I saw pale kings and princes too, pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall!” 

I saw their starved lips in the gloam, with horrid warning gaped wide, and I awoke and found me here, on the cold hill’s side.

And this is why I sojourn here, 
Alone and palely loitering,
though the sedge is wither’d from the lake, and no birds sing.

Wild Geese

The Radiance of Poetry and Storytelling

"guidance for finding real happiness within"  

This article is written to remind you of what you will find once you move through the various stages of soul growth. These stages are not necessarily linear. They are described in many different ways in many different times and in many different cultural contexts. 

These stages are Universal but they differ because we as individuals are unique. We are like the snowflake. Each snowflake has seven aspects that apply to all snowflakes but each snowflake is different.
 
In accepting the invitation to be an Anam Cara, that is the invitation to soul friendship, you undertake to become a bridge. 
 
You bridge the connection between that which you are in time and form with that which you are beyond time and beyond form. In he Anam cara Experience; Ready to Radiate eCourse you are invited to delve into poetry at a mystical level. At the beginning of this Ready to Radiate experience we look at the poem written by W. B Yeats entitled The Song of Wandering Aengus.
 
In this poem there is the experience of the call of the soul. This is represented in the following lines.
 

It had become a glimmering girl with
apple blossom in her hair
who called me by my name
and ran and faded through the
brightening air.
 
When the call first comes it tends to be unsettling or glorious and is often a combination of both. One thing that happens is that you find you cannot hold unto the beauty that fades through the brightening air. This is why the Anam Cara Experience is written. It is in order that you learn how to engage with beauty so that beauty becomes you and that you become more and more available to that which is beautiful within you.
 
Beauty as all wisdom teachers affirm becomes YOU. 
 
It is a perfume of who you are. You are simply ignorant of this grace. This is not intellectual ignorance but ignorance in the way that one sees the world as separate. Ignorance is at the heart of most suffering. You ignore the radiance of the Creation that you are and you suffer. This beauty that is calling to flow through you fades through the brightening air of spiritual understanding because your agenda is other than Love.
 
Did W.B.Yeats, writing as Aengus, ever find the glimmering girl with apple blossom in her hair? 
 
This writer thinks he did. You to can learn to connect with the beauty that flows through your being. It doesn’t have to be a symbol of a glimmering girl. It is more important that you connect to a symbol that resonates with you and that you learn to express such symbol as a radiance of who you are. This symbol will change and it will change you, as you are willing to allow it to enter deep into your heart. 

Let W. B. Yeats speak about how one feels when you allow the beauty that soul friendship can express through you.
 
Vacillation (IV)
 
My fiftieth year has come and gone.
I sat, a solitary man
In a crowded London shop
An open book and an empty cup
On marble table top.
 
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed so great my happiness
That I was blessed and could bless.
 
Each and every line of this reflection is pregnant with meaning. 
 
Here there is no wandering through hollow lands and hilly lands. Here there is no searching to find where beauty has gone as Aengus does. The body is a sudden blazed. This is the radiance of connection to the soul. It doesn’t come about through thinking about. It doesn’t come about through emotional attachment to the mask of personality. It comes when the body is allowed to be in flow. 

Mary Oliver expresses this beautifully when she says
 
You do not have to be good
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert repenting
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
Love what it loves.
 
From Wild Geese
By Mary Oliver
   
W. B.Yeats writes
 
At certain moments, always unforeseen, I become happy….. I look at the strangers near as if I had known them all my life.. everything fills me with affection……… It may be an hour before the mood passes, but lately I seem to understand that I enter upon it the moment I cease to hate.  

These moments of unforeseen connection are the radiance of soul friendship. They are the stuff of the Anam Cara experience. They come unannounced. They are grace moments of expanded awareness of who you are. They not only heal you in the sense that you feel blessed but you heal others simply by being available to such grace moments.
 
W. B.Yeats writes
 
My fiftieth year has come and gone.
 
You don’t have to wait until you are fifty although this is an age when matters of spiritual direction tend to call more and more. The work of soul friendship is to learn to be available to these moments as they flow. This openness to being available is represented by the line 

An open book and an empty cup.
 
This is an open mind and an open body available for those grace moment to flow. This is presence. This is the flow of Love through form. You are blessed. No more chasing rainbows. You and the one who calls you by your name are no longer separate. You have come full circle and returned home.
 
In those moments emptiness is power. The open book is the state of no mind available to the One Mind. The empty cup is the state described by the Master Jesus in the first beatitude from the Sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are they who are poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven."
 
Certainly these grace moments are not available if your heart is filled with hatred or any other emotional state linked to feelings of separateness. These emotional states are the lead that the Anam Cara learns to turn into gold. This is the real work of soul friendship. This is inner work. This is responsible work and is healing work. In the Islamic tradition it is called Jihad. It is the work of consciousness rising which paradoxically you do by simply getting grounded in trust and letting go.
 
You do not find these grace moments away from the body. This is why the poet says
 
My body of a sudden blazed out.
 
This is why Mary Oliver says
 
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
Love what it loves
 
This is trust in the body as a vehicle for the flow of the Divine. It is trust in the flow of feelings; trust in the flow of thought without attachment to thoughts as being who you are. This is trust and letting go and letting real happiness beyond conditionality arrive unforeseen.
  
Let me leave you with a poem that will remind you to allow the grace note that you are to play through you.
 
Birdsong brings relief
To my longing.
 
I am just as ecstatic as they are,
But with nothing to say!
 
Please, universal soul, practice
Some song, or something through me!
 
Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks.
 
Blessings until we resonate with each other again.
 
© Tony Cuckson 2008
 

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