{"id":7236,"date":"2021-09-17T08:05:41","date_gmt":"2021-09-17T15:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/?p=7236"},"modified":"2021-09-17T08:11:18","modified_gmt":"2021-09-17T15:11:18","slug":"david-whyte-all-the-true-vows-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/2021\/09\/17\/david-whyte-all-the-true-vows-3\/","title":{"rendered":"David Whyte – All the True Vows"},"content":{"rendered":"

All the True Vows
\nby David Whyte<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

All the true vows
\nare secret vows
\nthe ones we speak out loud
\nare the ones we break.<\/p>\n

There is only one life
\nyou can call your own
\nand a thousand others
\nyou can call by any name you want.<\/p>\n

Hold to the truth you make
\nevery day with your own body,
\ndon\u2019t turn your face away.<\/p>\n

Hold to your own truth
\nat the center of the image
\nyou were born with.<\/p>\n

Those who do not understand
\ntheir destiny will never understand
\nthe friends they have made
\nnor the work they have chosen<\/p>\n

nor the one life that waits
\nbeyond all the others.<\/p>\n

By the lake in the wood
\nin the shadows
\nyou can
\nwhisper that truth
\nto the quiet reflection
\nyou see in the water.<\/p>\n

Whatever you hear from
\nthe water, remember,<\/p>\n

it wants you to carry
\nthe sound of its truth on your lips.<\/p>\n

Remember,
\nin this place
\nno one can hear you<\/p>\n

and out of the silence
\nyou can make a promise
\nit will kill you to break,<\/p>\n

that way you\u2019ll find
\nwhat is real and what is not.<\/p>\n

I know what I am saying.
\nTime almost forsook me
\nand I looked again.<\/p>\n

Seeing my reflection
\nI broke a promise
\nand spoke
\nfor the first time
\nafter all these years<\/p>\n

in my own voice,<\/p>\n

before it was too late
\nto turn my face again.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the True Vows\u201d from The House of Belonging<\/i> by David Whyte.
\nCopyright \u00a9 1997, 2004 by David Whyte. \u00a0Used by permission of the author and Many Rivers Press (www.davidwhyte.com<\/a>) \u00a0All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n


\/ Image by Tevin Trinh<\/a> \/<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n

I read this poem by David Whyte as a meditation on the alienation most of us feel at one time or another in our own lives. Too often we aren\u2019t really present in our lives\u2013<\/p>\n

There is only one life
\nyou can call your own\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

He is saying that something powerful, even sacred, occurs when we stop contorting ourselves to reach for lives that are not our own. When we settle into ourselves, when we start to actually live our own lives, embody our own lives, we not only begin to really experience life deeply for the first time, we start to tap into \u201cthe one life that waits \/ beyond all others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Living this way, we find our true face, our true reflection. <\/p>\n

I especially like the ending verses:<\/p>\n

Seeing my reflection
\nI broke a promise
\nand spoke
\nfor the first time
\nafter all these years<\/p>\n

in my own voice.<\/i><\/p>\n

To rediscover our own voice, our true voice which has been socialized back into the shadows of our awareness, we have to break an old agreement, a \u201cpromise.\u201d We must decide to no longer identify with the roles and expectations set up for us. Finally dropping the masks we wear, we discover our true face, our \u201creflection.\u201d Then, \u201cfor the first time,\u201d we can speak in our own voice.<\/p>\n

Worth reading more than once\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/p>\n

David Whyte\u2019s words hold a special place in my personal journey.<\/p>\n

In the early 2000s, I was living with my wife on the island of Maui. It was a beautiful time in my life, but aimless. I was just doing work to get by, with no career to speak of. I was cut off from the world, by distance and by choice. <\/p>\n

A friend sent me a series of talks by David Whyte on cassette tape, and I went for long drives along Maui\u2019s meandering country roads, through the tall sugar cane fields and among the rows of spiky pineapple plants, listening to David Whyte\u2019s molasses accent as he recited poetry and told stories about brilliant and troubled poets, like Antonio Machado and Anna Akhmatova.<\/p>\n

It was Christmastime and I was quietly going through a deep and difficult self-confrontation. New Year\u2019s Day came and went, while I hovered in that open limbo state. This combination began to ferment in my mind, the poetry and the personal crisis.<\/p>\n

In early January it all converged. I picked up a book of conversations with the Indian sage Ramana Maharshi, read a couple of pages and\u2014POW!\u2014I was catapulted into an ecstatic stillness. Everything about me and my world came to a complete stop. The person I thought of as \u201cIvan\u201d disappeared. It was as if some undefined, wide-open awareness was quietly witnessing the world through my eyes. An indescribable joy bubbled up inside me. The entire world was an intangible outline sketched upon a golden-white radiance, and I was a ghost happily lost in that light.<\/p>\n

That moment set the trajectory for the unfolding of my life since. And it planted the seed for the Poetry Chaikhana. I am always thankful to David Whyte for the role he played at that transformative period in my life.<\/p>\n

=<\/p>\n

And have a wonderful weekend! The moon is growing full and luminous in the evening sky. In chaotic times, dance!<\/p>\n


\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a>Recommended Books: David Whyte<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n

\n\n\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

<\/center>
\n<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The House of Belonging<\/a><\/small><\/td>\nWhere Many Rivers Meet<\/a><\/small><\/td>\n<\/a><\/small><\/td>\n<\/a><\/small><\/td>\n<\/a><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n\n
\n\"David<\/a>\n<\/td>\n\nDavid Whyte<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

US (1955 \u2013 )
\nSecular or Eclectic<\/a><\/a>
\n<\/a><\/a><\/em>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

<\/p>\n

David Whyte grew up in Yorkshire, England. He studied Marine Zoology in Wales and trained as a naturalist in the Galapagos Islands. He has also worked as a naturalist guide, leading anthropological and natural history expeditions in various parts of the world, including treks among the mountains of Nepal. <\/p>\n

Whyte\u2019s poetry reflects a living spirituality and a deep connection to the natural world. <\/p>\n

He is one of the few poets to take his perspectives on creativity into the field of organizational development, conducting workshops with many American and international companies.<\/p>\n

David Whyte currently lives in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.<\/p>\n

More poetry by David Whyte<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All the True Vows by David Whyte All the true vows are secret vows the ones we speak out loud are the ones we break. There is only one life you can call your own and a thousand others you can call by any name you want. Hold to the truth you make every day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,3],"tags":[2185,2184,698,1091,1255,2435],"class_list":["post-7236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ivans-story","category-poetry","tag-alienation","tag-all-the-true-vows","tag-david-whyte","tag-face","tag-lake","tag-the-awakened-one"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7236"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7241,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7236\/revisions\/7241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}