David Whyte: Preserving the Soul (excerpt) - Thinking Allowed with Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove

I think we all realize in some ways that the game is up as far as our delusions about how you can live your lives ignoring larger pictures in the larger picture is therefore is facing us all the time and this is exactly what's happening in the corporate world now there's a tremendous thirst you can go to any company it doesn't matter who it is it can be AT&T it can be Ford Motor Company it can be Stanford University any organization people are desperate and they're dying on their feet in a way and they want to know what happened to their lives and how they can how they can move into something that's more satisfying and more real and more alive above all but more alive and this is where poetry is enormous ly successful because when you're talking about a subject with a room full of an engineer say Bell Labs or something you that usually in a room if you try and talk about very precious experiences the more you talk about them the further they go away but with poetry which is actually not about a subject not about a quality or an experience but is the experience itself you can actually create that experience in the room you see and so you can say look okay your organization and you yourselves as work teams are asking to change you're asking for creative change this is not new human beings are being being asking themselves this question for thousands of years for millennia many of them have been good poets and have left poems that have outlived them they're immortal poems and they're immortal because they speak to every human being in every generation so here are some of the steps along the path and the amazing thing is is that the steps are very precise if you want to start on the path for instance you say what does it really mean to have really radical change in an organization then you can recite Dante's line from from the beginning of the comedy R which is an L Metsu del commend in Ostrava Tommy retro vibe Scooter Selva in the middle of the road of my life I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost in the middle of the road of my life I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost how do you know that you're on your path because it disappears that's how you know how do you know that you're really doing something radical because you don't you can't see where you're going that's how you know but everything you have leant on for your identity that's gone and so you are going to enter the the black contemplative splendors of self-doubt at the same time as you're setting out on this radical new path and then you see if you can put this across people suddenly say wow amazing that's that's my life there's something astonishing about my you're suggesting that the Dante provides a road map for us in some sense it certainly does yes in many stages the way them in the comedy it was called the Divine Comedy R because it is absolutely an astonishing road map of life but many other poets have left footprints in the snow that you can follow I own one book of poetry describes it as the the poet's is the technicians of the sacred yes that's right that's right and for instance that first stage of bit of entering the dark ward there's a marvelous poem by David Wagner as the chair of poetry at the University of Washington where the poem called last and it's a it's a teaching story from the Northwest Indian teaching tradition that were it was the story that will be a told to a young boy or girl that would ask the question what do I do when I'm lost in the forest see this is a life-or-death question in the in the climax cedar forests of the Northwest 150 foot high you walk into them just a hundred yards you can't see any of the four cardinal directions so you need to know how you know where you are well it but this is an equally true question for a middle manager in an organization in the large organization offer a street kid in Philadelphia what do I do when I'm lost in the city what do I do and I'm lost in the organization here's the answer that they the elder gives you can feel from this how precise the teaching is you know we often feel you we're not going to go into these areas of the psyche because it's all wet and wooly in them besides you need to hold the hand of a trained psychologist or because of lawsuits whatever but actually Porsche shows how incredibly incredibly precise it is in there and that there's an equally clear bottom line but the rules are very different and and the rules are much more moveable and the whole world is much more dynamic and this is what the elder is is telling to this young boy or girl who asked the question what do I do and I'm lost in Ferris the elder says stand still the trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost stands that what do I do and I'm lost in the forest and still the trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost wherever you are is called here and you must treat it as a powerful stranger must ask permission to know it and be known listen the forest breathes it whispers I have made this place around you if you leave it you may come back again saying here no two trees are the same - Raven no two branches are the same - Wren if what a tree or a branch does is lost on you then you are surely lost stand still the forest knows where you are the forest knows where you are stand still the forest knows where you are you must let it find you you must let it find you see what's astonishing about that poems you can say there are three things in this poem you see that are absolutely clear first of all the elder says you cannot sleep walk your way into your destiny you must wake up and pay attention stand still the trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost you must pay attention that means paying attention to the shadow sides of shadows of your existence - you must pay attention to everything you've given away in order to make yourself safe in your position at work all the games you play in order to remain safe and untouched as well as your creative gifts - you must pay attention to those also second stage is that is that in this in this teaching from the elder is this incredible feeling of silence that unless you have this silence in your life and you feel the silence in the poem where it says if you leave it you may come back again say here no two trees are the same - Raven no two branches are the same - Wren if what a tree or a branch does is lost on you then you are surely lost you feel the silence there you're almost under that cedar canopy there and I think what the elder is saying there is that if you pay real attention unless you have silence an ability for silence in your body to do that then you will get too frightened because all the voices inside you will drown out any real change and there you have a hundred reasons not to do to make any real change you see and you've got all the voices and all the reasons not to do it and so the ability profound for profound silence is being called on here and then that attention can confer our into something else because you really don't know what your grief is if you do feel grief about your workplace you really don't know what's underneath that grief until you fall into it the poem seems to me attempting to awaken a kind of intuitive sense that's right and then this amazing last line the forest knows where you are you must let it find you

Channel: ThinkingAllowedTV

Views: 62,472

Rating: 4.8989601 out of 5

Keywords: Poetry, Business, Soul, Insight, Workplace, Wisdom

Id: Vlz3mf7jxkc

Length: 8min 29sec (509 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 09 2012