I’ve heard about David Whyte, the poet, and philosopher but, I’m only now ready to listen to him. Interesting when the mind is open to new insights and new teachers. Only when the student is ready, then the teacher appears.

He recently came up in my YouTube feed from “Inside the Mind of a Master Writer — David Whyte” on David Perell’s YouTube channel. I was captivated by how articulate he was, and learned so much about myself through his reflections on life and how we experience it in this brief conversation.

Below is a link to this conversation – click on the image.

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.

“Sweet Darkness” by David Whyte, David Whyte

If the world comes and speaks to you in its own essence, rather than the ventriloquous voice you have pushed against onto it—and it’s true, you know, in a relationship or marriage, your partner, your loving partner: How many times are we trying to throw our voice into their bodies so they’ll say the thing we want them to say? Yeah. How many times do we really listen to the essence of who we’ve got there? And we’re afraid of that essence because it’s movable; it’s always seasonable. So we’re afraid of finding that actually our partner doesn’t like us at the moment, you know, because of the way we are. And we’re afraid of that revelation. So a real attentive ear and eye is saying, “What are you seeing? What are you hearing? What are you finding here? I want to know.” And, uh, and going out to meet that. So maybe they’d find something different through that refreshing sense of new presence.

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