Awakening the Soul is my favorite writing of this Irish poet and Yes,
the greates friend of the soul is not another soul but "The greatest
friend of the soul is the unknown."
Who is John O’Donohue?
John O'Donohue is an inspiring Irish
poet, philosopher, contemporary mystic and original thinker.
I love his poem and specially writing on awakening the soul and walking
the unknown
When your soul is born, when it awakens anew,
you begin to inherit your true life, the
one you were meant for. You leave the kingdom of fake surfaces,
repetitive talk, and weary roles and slip deeper into the true adventure
of who you are and who you are being called to become. The greatest
friend of the soul is the unknown.
Yet we are afraid of the unknown because it lies outside
our vision and our control. We avoid it or quell it by filtering it
through our protective barriers of domestication and control. This way,
however, never leads home.
"Behind every face there is something eternal going
on," writes Irish poet and spiritual philosopher John O’Donohue,
author of Anam Cara, Eternal Echoes, and Beauty. And it is dedication
to that "something eternal" that has made John a voice of
inspiration, beauty, and purpose. His work and words guide the way to
our soul’s calling and the living power of our imaginations, while
acknowledging the obstacles we will face along the way. "Even the
strangest and most magical things," he writes, "become absorbed
into the routine of the daily mind with its steady geographies of endurance,
anxiety, and contentment." In the following piece, John offers
us a lively, poetic reflection on the gifts and challenges we are bound
to encounter on the path of awakening.
Why must we answer the call to awaken? Why must we follow
the questions of our soul? Because it is through habitual, non-inquisitive
living that we lose our sense of wonder. Because eventually, even the
strangest or most magical things become absorbed into the routine of
the daily mind with its steady geographies of endurance, anxiety, and
contentment. Left to our own devices, curiosity dims and fear of the
unknown binds us; we cling to the known. Only seldom does the haze lift,
as we glimpse for a moment the amazing plenitude of being here in the
heart of the greatest story ever told—our own lives.
Once you start to awaken, however, nothing or no one can
ever claim you again, pull you back into old patterns. Once you start
to awaken, you know how precious your time here—on earth, in this
body—is. You are no longer willing to squander your essence on
undertakings that do not nourish your true self; your patience grows
thin with tired talk and dead language. You see through the rosters
of expectation that promise you safety and the confirmations of your
outer identity. Now you are impatient for growth, willing to put yourself
in the way of change. You want your work to become an expression of
your innate gifts. You want your relationships to voyage beyond the
pallid frontiers to where the danger of transformation dwells. You want
your God to be wild and to call you to where your destiny awaits.
When your soul is born, when it awakens anew, you begin
to inherit your true life, the one you were meant for. You leave the
kingdom of fake surfaces, repetitive talk, and weary roles and slip
deeper into the true adventure of who you are and who you are being
called to become. The greatest friend of the soul is the unknown.
Yet we are afraid of the unknown because it lies outside
our vision and our control. We avoid it or quell it by filtering it
through our protective barriers of domestication and control. This way,
however, never leads home.
Unfortunately, it sometimes takes deep suffering, grief,
or loss to awaken us. It could happen one evening in the middle of your
life, your routines, your roles. The phone rings. Someone you love is
in the grip of a serious illness that could take their life within months.
It only takes a few seconds to receive that news. Yet, when you put
the phone down, you are already standing in a different world. All you
know has just been rendered unsure, tenuous. And it is in that unknown,
in that mystery place, that lies the invitation to stay awake.
If you could imagine the most incredible story ever, it
would be less incredible than the story of our being here alive on this
earth. Ironically, it is not "just" a story; it’s the
truth of our lives. Yet it takes us so long to see where we are along
the path of our soul’s story. And it takes us even longer to see
who we are. The single most important gift you can give yourself is
the invitation to awaken to who you are and where you have landed. And
you are the only person who can offer, and accept, that gift. Plato
said in The Symposium that one of the greatest privileges of a human
life is to become midwife to the birth of the soul—in this case,
the birth of your own soul.
And when you finally come out of the illusion—Plato’s
Cave of Images—you emerge into the sunlight, into the mystery of
color and imagination. When you begin to sense that your imagination
is the place where you are most divine, you feel called to clean out
of your mind all the worn and shabby furniture of thought. You wish
to refurbish yourself with the living imagination so that you can begin
to see, so that your thoughts can become what Meister Eckhart calls
"our inner senses." When the inner senses are dull and blurred,
you become a respectable prisoner of a mind able to receive everything
except the extraordinary.
