We Are Stardust
A Peripatetic Poetic Epiphany
Cosmic Consciousness!
This Spiralling helix thread will continue beyond today’s blog, essay and poetic offering as we lean into Living The Questions of Who We Are.
Please reach out in the comments with anything you would like to share.
I plan to take this question live soon as a poetic zoom call.
Thank you for Being Here.
Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!
Listen Here
I hear a drum in my soul’s ear coming from the depth of the stars
Rumi
The Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, arguably the greatest poet of the twentieth century, wrote the following untitled poem commonly known now as “Widening Circles” which was part of his 1905 book, The Book of Hours.
I live my life in ever widening circles
That span their wings
Across the things
Maybe I won’t fulfil the last one
But I’d like to try
I encircle God,
The ancient tower,
I have drawn my circles for thousands of years
And I still don’t know
Am I a falcon, am I a storm
Or am I a never ending song.
Translation: S.Adamea
This is my favourite poem! It speaks to me on many levels; mortal and spiritual, intellectual and emotional. As opposed to inspiring a new discovery, Rilke’s words evoke an intuitive feeling of remembering something that I had forgotten.
To me Rilke speaks of living life in widening and expanding rings. Circles that reach out across the world and touch all things. He speaks to a journey. A day, a year, a life, lifetimes. He references thousands of years of time, millennia, and is trying to reach out farther and for longer. Surrendering to the Fates of existence. Rilke circles God and the ancient primordial tower of creation. Rilke frequently uses “I” and yet asks who he is. A falcon? A storm? A hymn? A great song or a never ending song. To be a “great” song as opposed to being an “unending” song is the biggest change for me context wise between the versions. In that one word the poem creates a different invitation for me and brings me into a deeper conversation with myself.
I hear Rilke asking the great questions that define all of us. Who am I? Is this lifetime all that I have? Is this body my essence? Where did I come from?
I hear Rilke saying he is a falcon, a storm, and an unending song. All of these. To me Rilke speaks of an expanding consciousness that slowly moves beyond a body. Beyond a form. A body in a soul. Encompassing and connected to all things. An expansion of being. Cosmic energy on a journey home. A soul’s journey. Circling the creator in vaster circles. An orbiting comet. A spiral galaxy. An eternal existence of awareness. A timeless essence of oneness connected with the very source of the universe herself. A perpetual journey home.
The great Canadian indigenous writer and storyteller Richard Wagamese wrote in Embers, “When I allow myself to feel my body, when I can inhabit it and allow myself to close off the world beyond my flesh, I become who I am- energy and spirit. I am not my mind. I am not my brain. I am stardust, comets, nebulae, and galaxies. I am trees and wind and stone. I am space. I am emptiness and wholeness at the same time. That is when my body sings to me, a glorious ancient song redolent with mystery seeking to remain mystery. Connecting to it, living with it, becoming it even for a moment, I am healed and made more.” This beautiful reflection creates a different interpretation of the popular saying, “ In the world but not of it”.
Joni Mitchell famously sang about a spiritual journey to Yasgur’s farm in the 1970 hit song Woodstock, singing that We are Stardust!
We are a way for the universe to know itself.
Carl Sagan
American cosmologist and astrophysicist Carl Sagan professed, “We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star stuff.”
He was inspired by the work of Cecelia Payne who in 1925 discovered the chemical fingerprint of the universe. Sagan shared, “Even through your hardest days, remember we are all made of stardust.” Scientists estimate that 93 percent of the mass of our body is literally made of stardust.
We have calcium in our bones, iron in our veins, carbon in our souls, and nitrogen in our brains. 93 percent stardust, with souls made of flames, we are all just stars that have people names.
Nikita Gill (Your Soul is a River)
Transpersonal Psychologist Dr. Steve Taylor of Leeds Beckett University, UK, writes in his book, Spiritual Science, that there is a fundamental spirit or universal consciousness that is ever-present and in everything. Taylor calls this spirit-force. He states that this universal consciousness precedes both mind and matter and is the source of both. This essence of our being is everywhere and is present in everything. As living beings, we are not separate from each other, or from the everything in this world that we live in. This ideology of oneness was developed independently by most of the world’s indigenous cultures. It was also independently incorporated by each of the world’s mystical and spiritual traditions. Taylor says that the universe is not an inanimate, empty place, but a living organism. The whole cosmos is imbued with this spirit-force, from the tiniest particles of matter to the vast, seemingly empty tracts of darkness between planets and solar systems. Taylor calls this panspiritism.
Richard Wagamese reflecting in Embers that “I used to believe my body contained my soul. That was fine for a while. But when I started thinking about oneness with the Creator, I came to believe that it’s the other way around. My soul contains my body. It is everything that I am. I am never separate from Creator except within my mind. That’s the ultimate truth, and I need to be reminded, to learn again, to learn anew in order to get it. When I do, I know the truth of what my people say: that we are all spirit, we are all energy, joined to everything that is everywhere, all things coming true together.”
Universal consciousness is the spirit-force, possibly the creator itself, that connects everything. The ancient primordial tower. This spirit-force is intertwined with our own individual consciousness to rest as the seat of our soul. Wagamese in his posthumous book, One Drum, speaks of communion as the act of aligning personal energy with earth energy, universal energy and, ultimately, eternal energy. Rilke echoed this as he asked if he was a falcon, a storm or a never ending song. We are the communion of spirit and soul. Oneness.
Our bodies are made of and wrapped in the divine light of the cosmos herself. We are unique expressions of stardust. The breath of the universe flows through everything, embedded inside of every atom, organism, every living thing, drop of water, ray of light, gust of wind, leaf and blade of grass!
Spirituality is a relationship with the consciousness of the universe. The Advaita non duality of the mystic east whirling with the divine sacred breath of the indigenous west. Spirituality is a way of seeing the cosmos in which we are simultaneously different parts of the whole as well as the whole itself. The ocean and the waves. One energy. A falcon. A storm. A never ending song. The communion of spirit and soul. Love and light. In the world but not of it. We are stardust!
Star Dust
I’ve always been here
The essence of being
Forged in the sweet nectar
of darkness
A spiralling helix fire
born of naked mystery
Burning
into the oceans
of roaring creativity
I am dust and ashes of soul
Stained by the light
A pilgrim
on the serpentine road
Surrendering
to the rhythm
of love
A rhapsody
baptized in revelation
Conjuring with the angels
Rolling in my bones
I am from elsewhere
A burgeoning ripple
The swelling storm of presence
Above thought
Beyond form
Windsong drenched in wine
The child of cosmic soot
disappearing
into the broken stones
of time
© Jamie Millard
Poem Recording Only
Thank you for reading and listening as we lean into the Cuoreosity of Living The Questions.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Lots of love,
Jamie
Thanks Phillip! Your comments are a poem. Reading an original in the language it is written in is a gift. I have seen many different versions of Rilke’s words translated from German to English. One word can change a poem and create different imagery, feelings and meaning for the reader. I make my best attempt to interact as closely with the original as possible. Great vs Unending change so much for me.
Two more translations
I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
Translation: J.Macy
I live my life in spreading rings
that encompass all things
I might never reach the last one,
But I will try.
I circle around God
Around the ancient tower
As I have circled for a thousand years
And I still don’t know if I am a falcon
A storm, or an endless song.
Translation: Unknown
I am a novice on Hungarian modern poets.
Something tells me we would have some great conversations. Thank you so much for reading and responding Phillip!
Beautiful poem. Thank you.
Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, "We're not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." So essentially it's all part of it. Perfect imperfection. The tears and the joy, the challenges and struggles and the "conjuring with the angels" ( Jamie Millard).