david whyte

Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb 
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

 -- David Whyte
     from The House of Belonging 
     ©1996 Many Rivers Press

Sweet Darkness: by David Whyte, music Christian Lindquist, spoken by M.J. Hummingway

SECOND SIGHT

Sometimes, you need the ocean light, 
and colors you’ve never seen before
painted through an evening sky.

Sometimes you need your God 
to be a simple invitation
not a telling word of wisdom.

Sometimes you need only the first shyness 
that comes from being shown things
far beyond your understanding,

so that you can fly and become free
by being still and by being still here.

And then there are times you want to be 
brought to ground by touch 
and touch alone.

To know those arms around you
and to make your home in the world 
just by being wanted. 

To see those eyes looking back at you,
as eyes should see you at last,

seeing you, as you always wanted to be seen,
seeing you, as you yourself 
had always wanted to see the world.

© David Whyte ‘SECOND SIGHT’
From Pilgrim: Poems by David Whyte
©2012 David Whyte

PHOTO © David Whyte 2014:
Evening Sky over Port Meadow: Oxford; England.

Second Sight by David Whyte, Music John Boswell, Spoken By M.J. Hummingway

FINISTERRE
The road in the end taking the path 
the sun had taken
, into the western sea, and the moon
 rising behind you 
as you stood where ground turned
 to ocean: no way
 to your future now 
   but the way your shadow could
 take, 
walking before you across water,
  going where shadows go, 
no way to make sense of a world
  that wouldn’t let you pass 
except to call an end to the way you
 had come,
 to take out each frayed letter you 
had brought
 and light their illumined corners,
 and to read
 them as they drifted through the 
western light; 
to empty your bags; to sort this and 
to leave that;
 to promise what you needed to
 promise all along,
 and to abandon the shoes that
 brought you here
 right at the water’s edge,
  not because you had given up 
but because now, 
 you would find a different way to
 tread,
 and because, through it all,
  part of you would still walk on,
 no matter how, over the waves.
'Finisterre'
 From PILGRIM: Poems by David Whyte
 ©2012 David Whyte & Many Rivers Press

FINISTERRE by David Whyte, Music Fabrizio Pigliucci, Spoken By M.J. Hummingway  Mixdown 1

The road seen, then not seen, the hillside     
hiding then revealing the way you should take,
the road dropping away from you as if leaving you 
to walk on thin air, then catching you, holding you up, 
when you thought you would fall, 
and the way forward always in the end 
the way that you followed, the way that carried you 
into your future, that brought you to this place, 
no matter that it sometimes took your promise from you, 
no matter that it always had to break your heart 
along the way, the sense of having walked 
from far inside yourself out into the revelation, 
to have risked yourself for something that seemed 
to stand both inside you and far beyond you, 
that called you back in the end to the only road 
you could follow, walking as you did, in your rags of love and speaking in the voice that by night 
became a prayer for safe arrival…


From SANTIAGO In Pilgrim, By David Whyte, Music Fabrizio Pigliucci, Voice M.J. Hummingway

Part one of a David Whyte's Poem's of Self Compassion on Innocences as Vital Force through self forgiving

David Whyte Poems of Self Compassion Part 1

And though all the things I love 
may pass away and
the great family of things and people
I have made around me 
will see me go,
I feel them living in me
like a great gathering
ready to reach a greater home.

When one thing dies all things
die together, and must live again
in a different way, 
when one thing
is missing everything is missing, 
and must be found again
in a new whole
and everything wants to be complete,
everything wants to go home
and the geese traveling south 
are like the shadow of my breath
flying into the darkness
on great heart-beats
to an unknown land where I belong.

This morning they have
found me,
full of faith,
like a blind child,
nestled in their feathers,
following the great coast of the wind
to a home I cannot see.
~David Whyte

David Whyte, From "What I Must Tell Myself," music Fabrizio Pigliucci, voice M.J. Hummingway

David Whyte, Poet, Author, Lecturer holds a degree in Marine Zoology and has traveled extensively, including living and working as a naturalist guide in the Galapagos Islands and leading anthropological and natural history expeditions in the Andes, the Amazon and the Himalaya. He brings this wealth of experience to his poetry, lectures and workshops. http://www.davidwhyte.com

Buy the book!

David Whyte - The Three Marriages

THE MIRACLE HAD COME…
...the miracle had come simply  from allowing yourself to know  that you had found it, that this time  someone walking out into the clear air  from far inside you had decided not to walk  past it any more; the miracle had come  at the roadside in the kneeling to drink  and the prayer you said, and the tears you shed  and the memory you held and the realization  that in this silence you no longer had to keep  your eyes and ears averted from the place  that could save you, that you had been given  the strength to let go of the thirsty dust laden  pilgrim-self that brought you here, walking  with her bent back, her bowed head  and her careful explanations…
Excerpt from “THE WELL” From Pilgrim: Poems by David Whyte ©2012 David Whyte

Excerpts from"THE WELL" by David Whyte, Music Fabrizio Pigliucci, Voice M.J. Hummingway

DISCLAIMER: music and video belong to their respective owners and is not owned by me.
A MORNING DEDICATION
…To remember 
the other world 
in this world 
is to live in your 
 true inheritance...
You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents, 
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.
Now, looking through 
the slanting light
of the morning 
window toward
the mountain presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love? What shape 
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?
Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house? 
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?
Excerpt from ‘What to Remember When        Waking’
From RIVER FLOW: New and Selected Poems
Many Rivers Press. ©David Whyte
Photo © David Whyte


From "River Flow" By David Whyte Music Daniel Mille, Voice M.J. HummingwayMixdown

INUTE ETERNITY
I remember 
needing nothing
but what I could smell and touch 
and hear in the minute
eternity between sounds or the long 
shimmer of the barley’s
green-gold dance on the wind, 
my life a spreading ring
of quiet, like the trout’s brief 
in-breath
at the surface of a river, 
like the slow
outward movement of a raindrop 
spreading on a still lake…
From ‘Death Waits’: in ‘River Flow: 
New and Selected Poems’
©David Whyte and Many Rivers Press
Photo © David Whyte
Mountain Tarn, Cumbria
July 2011

Minute Eternity, By David Whyte, Music Christian Lindquist, Voice M.J. Hummingway

David Whyte talking about work and reading his poem 'One Day'. Taken from his "Clear Mind, Wild Heart" series

David Whyte - One Day

TWICE BLESSED
So that I stopped there 
astonished 
by the great everywhere
calling to me
 like an invisible
  unspoken invitation
 radiating from where I stood,
 everything given 
 and everything taken from me
 everything wanting  
and everything already given,
 the way I have come so far and
 the way I am still promised to
 go, 
within and without,
 something I was, and 
something I am now
 and will be forever,
 the sheer generosity of being 
loved 
through loving: 
the miracle reflection of a twice 
blessed life.
©  

David Whyte,  from "TWICE BLESSED" Music Fabrizio Pigliucci, Voice M.J. Hummingway

David Whyte:  The Poetry of Self-Compassion

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Poem by David Whyte, music from Baraka, voice M.J. Hummingway

David Whyte - Venturing Across the Unknown

David Whyte - Engaging Life's Conversation

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See the full presentation here: http://armedwithvisions.com/2013/04/06/david-whyte-sometimes

david whyte

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