Opening Your Eyes

Poets are pre-Reformation priests trying to help the blind to see. But try practicing this on your own:

Illustration by Max Liebert, from 

Ludwig Fulda's Aladdin in the Magic Garden

Sit outside on a nice day with your eyes closed and mind empty for as long as it might take to read a poem. Then, with no preconceptions, open your now-seeing eyes in a flash! This is Revelation!!

Continue “practicing” in the same location, clearing your mind each time, for 10-15 minutes (or longer if you want), and in different settings on different days: a different outside location; a coffee shop; your living room; on a public downtown or park bench;  outside on a not so nice day; etc.

Following each new ‘raw’ in-the-moment unarticulated revelation, ask yourself “What is this place? What am I seeing and hearing, REALLY…” See it anew, as if for the very first time, without having to articulate what your newly-open eyes reveal.

With practice, you will begin to fathom more and more directly the Divine, without the intermediation of poet-priests.

And while you might not write poems, perhaps you will... 

But there will be no need.