Opening statement: In this little essay, I am addressing poets specifically, but the reader doesn't have to be a poet to key into or identify with what I am saying. Please note: After this post I plan to take a break from posting for a few weeks.
Czeslaw Milosz, (winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature [1911 - 2004]) was a human bridge, spanning three eras: the classical / romantic era and the turned-on era (heralded by Sargent Pepper,(1967) the Beatles' 8th studio album) and the turned-on era and the one-world / one planet era that we inhabit now, albeit badly. I say we inhabit this time badly because, we have failed to step into our power as a species that knows full-well what we stand to lose.
By his example, Milosz teaches us to step into or "fuse" with our times, not just witness or react.
(From: .poetryfoundation.org/poets/czeslaw-milosz:)
"Milosz articulated a fundamental difference in the role of poetry in the capitalist West and the communist East. Western poetry, as Alfred Kazin wrote in the New York Times Book Review, is "'alienated' poetry, full of introspective anxiety." But because of the dictatorial nature of communist government, poets in the East cannot afford to be preoccupied with themselves. They are drawn to write of the larger problems of their society. "A peculiar fusion of the individual and the historical took place," Milosz wrote in The Witness of Poetry, "which means that events burdening a whole community are perceived by a poet as touching him in a most personal manner. Then poetry is no longer alienated."
We are living in a time when poets need to take the crises in the world personally. The East / West divide or Communist worldview (espousing conformity and collective cohesion) VS the Capitalist (Western) worldview (espousing the free market and free-thinking) is no more. Milosz could have been a victim of this schism but instead he transcended it via his poetry. He defected from the East (Poland) and transplanted himself in the West, but, far from being a chameleon, wrapping himself in a flag, he became, arguably, our first whole-planetary, full-fledged citizen of the world.
His perspective was full spectrum both historically and culturally. He loved, even still identified with, aspects of the world he left behind along with aspects of the world he adopted and, as in any marriage, he was troubled by the failings of both those worlds. In order to survive and not go mad (schizophrenic) or slip into dark depression, Milosz had to personalize all of it. He managed to do that with poetry.
Today the issues and problems of the world are not Western VS Eastern (in spite of moronic Medieval-IQ leaders like Putin and Trump who insist on playing chess to the bitter end). Climate change, social / racial injustice, genocide, endless war, rich VS poor, economic and sexual slavery etc, all of the big issues we face these days are like heads of the Hydra. They are all of the same beast arising from traumatized human nature, not the failings of any system or systems. That is so obvious it isn't what I want to write about.
What I want to write about is the new role of the poet (or the role of the new poet), which is to create space for the human heart.
The human heart is a largely untapped resource. Once we begin to relate to the world via our hearts, our experience of the world expands from that central point. Yogic science has known for centuries that the heart is Grand Central for health and spiritual well-being. The heart is the only organ in our body that is also a chakra but also a transformer. It boosts energy - energy for life.
Heart entrainment is when we let the heart take the lead in our life. That is, we learn to use it as a processor, a compass and a transformer.
The heart is intelligent, intuitive, perceptive and empathetic. It is also a quantum processor when it is entrained to the gut and brain via the vagus nerve.
Back to Milosz (who I am calling one of our first whole-planetary citizens). When I read certain of his poems, I realize that he is processing his reality metaphorically at a very high level and at a heart-level.
Our heart requires space to expand and flourish. Unless it has the space to function at full capacity, living larger through heart entrainment can backfire on us. We know a lot more about the heart than we might give ourselves credit for. Think of what opens your heart and think of what shuts it down. Fear is the most common enemy of an open heart.
Most of us shy away from public speaking, so let's use that as an example of how the heart responds to fear. But fear shuts down all the ways our hearts try to engage with the world. Think of fear as a primitive default program, like DOS. If the heart is a super-processor, fear is a hard drive with a command-line interface. Enough said.
What I mean by space, as in creating space for the heart, is unquantifiable, but very real. In order to come up with a definition of space as I am using it here, I turn to Buddhism. In Buddhist thought, space is not viewed as a physical container but rather as a concept intertwined with emptiness and impermanence. It's not a separate entity but a fundamental aspect of reality, arising from and dependent on the principle of emptiness. In Buddhist thought and practice, space is not fixed or limited, but rather infinite and interconnected with all things. That is how the heart uses space, as potential for "interconnecting with all things".
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