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Shai: Hello everyone. I am so delighted and honored to have David Whyte as our guest at 1000 reasons for feeling awe. David Whyte stands as a remarkable figure in the world of poetry and prose, drawing deeply from his rich heritage and diverse experiences. Raised amidst the picturesque landscapes of Yorkshire and influenced by his Irish roots, White now resides in the Pacific Northwest, finding inspiration in its natural beauty. His works, including esteemed titles like The Heart Aroused, The Bell, and The Blackboard, reflect a profound exploration of humanity’s relationship with the world, creation, and the essence of life. With a background in marine zoology and experiences like guiding in the Galapagos Islands, Whyte brings a unique perspective to his writing. His poetry resonates beyond the literary sphere, touching lives in corporate boardrooms, educational institutions, and theological conferences, highlighting its universal relevance. Founder of many rivers and invitas, the Institute for Conversational Leadership, White’s influence extends into leadership and personal development, showcasing his multifaceted talents and deep commitment to understanding life’s complexities. So, David, thank you so much for your willingness to participate in this project.

David: Yes, I am very happy to be here. Talk about the theme of awe, which is a necessary thread in every human.

Shai: Thank you. Yes, I certainly share that feeling. I would like to start by reading a short passage that appears on your website titled The Power of Poetry. Wouldn’t that be okay?

David: Yes, please do.

Shai: Thank you. So, the poet leaves and writes at the frontier between deep internal experience and the revelations of the outer world. There is no going back. Once this frontier has been reached, a new territory is visible, and what has been said cannot be unsaid. Poetry is a break from freedom. In a sense, all poems are good. All poems are an emblem of courage and the attempt to say the unsayable. But only a few are able to speak to something universal yet personal and distinct at the same time to create a door through which others can walk into what previously seemed unattainable realms in the passage of a few short lines. So these are extraordinary lines. And I would like to start by asking you: Is poetry in itself an expression of awe?

David: In a sense, it is because poetry is trying to establish your place in all of the contexts at once, including the contexts that are hidden from you. So the contexts that are hidden below the horizon of your understanding inside you and then beyond the horizon of what you can see with your eyes, hear with your ears, or number with your intellect. So quite often, we all understand the way that we can live our lives and not even be aware of contexts that are right before our eyes, actually that are surrounding us, but which we’re choosing to ignore.

And quite often, when we close off our senses and our understandings from everything that’s knocking on our door because of the general trauma of existence, of being wounded just by meeting other people or other things in life, human beings necessarily draw themselves in and create defenses at times in order to pass through a difficult time in their lives. But in doing that, they almost always never emerge again in a full way unless they’re really conscious of it. So we tend to close down our experience of awe as we close down our sharper, finer, and more far-seeing abilities to understand what’s going on around us. So the act of writing poetry is to try and attempt to bring all of the contexts, both seen and unseen, into a live conversation again.

And the poet is trying to overhear themselves say things they didn’t know they knew, to surprise themselves into their lives again. And that’s one of the reasons for awe: how surprising it is. And one of the diagnostics of having shut awe out of our lives is that we start to become cynical. And one of the chief diagnostics of cynicism is my saying that you can’t surprise me. I know how the game is played, and I refuse to be surprised by anything. I will have an explanation for anything, and I will have a box to put our experience into. Yes, poetry is an unboxing experience, you could say.

Shai: Yes, that, of course, would imply that the good poet has to remove his or her fences in order to be somehow vulnerable, susceptible, or exposed to life.

David: Yes, we tend to think, when we use the metaphor of dismantling or taking down barriers, that it’s hard work. It is a kind of hard work, but it’s the hard work of undoing, actually, of radical not doing, and of dropping down into a more rested, centered, attentive part of the psyche that, just by looking from that place, things start to actually disappear in the way you’ve been seeing them or the way you’ve been arranging your relationship with identity. I think a lot of good art, good speech, and good conversation have to do with the ability to arrange for our own disappearance. The way you see yourself, the way you see the world, the way you think—you have to hold a conversation—all are just let go of so that things can start in the innocence of a real meeting.

Poetry as a form, but any real conversation really as a form of radical undoing. And that’s when the awe starts to open up. I have a piece, actually, that represents that experience. Shall I recite it?

Shai: Oh, yes, please. I had in mind, while you were speaking the poem, something just beyond yourself that somehow seemed to touch on this very experience. Of course, this doesn’t mean that this is what I ask you to recite, but I’m just reminded of it.

David: Well, I was thinking of another poem, but I’m very suggestible, obviously, so I’ll work with that one just beyond yourself, because it does work with it perfectly. And we can return to the one I was thinking.

So just beyond yourself. That’s an experience I had walking up a boreen, which is an Irish name for a small lane in County Clare in the west of Ireland. And I stood at the bottom of this lane, this narrow road, and it had two beautiful limestone walls on either side of it. And the two limestone walls met almost in perfect Italian Renaissance perspective, right at the top of the hill, except they didn’t quite meet. There was a little door of light where the western sun was going down. The light was shining through that little doorway of light, and I felt this incredible invitation to walk to that horizon. And I felt as if I could walk through that door and off into the thin air of my new existence.

And it was a very poignant time because I’d just gone through a separation and divorce from a marriage, and I was attending a marriage in County Clare, actually. And there’s nothing more poignant in your life than attending a wedding when you’re leaving your marriage. And yet it’s still just as moving that two people are speaking of awe. There’s a tremendous amount of awe at a wedding ceremony when you’re witnessing two people make a promise in the teeth, in the gale-force wind. Of all the evidence that this is extremely difficult to do, that’s an awe-inspiring experience, but it makes you very thoughtful. And this was a typical Irish three-day wedding, or at least an old-fashioned Irish three-day wedding. So I’d gone up this road to take a little space for myself.

I was in a very thoughtful place, and there was this new life waiting for me outside, beyond the grief and difficulty of the separation. So this is the piece I wrote, and it’s called Just Beyond Yourself. Just beyond yourself. It’s where you need to be. Just beyond yourself. It’s where you need to be half a step into self-forgetting and restored by what you’ll meet. Just beyond yourself. Just beyond yourself, it’s where you need to be half a step into self-forgetting and restored by what you’ll meet. There’s a road always beckoning when you see the two sides of it closing together at that far horizon and deep in the foundations of your own heart at exactly the same time. That’s how you know it’s the road you have to follow.

That’s how you know where you have to go. That’s how you know you have to go. That’s how you know it’s just beyond yourself; it’s where you need to be. Just beyond yourself, it’s where you need to be. Half a step into self-forgetting and being restored by what you’ll meet. There’s a road; there’s a road always beckoning when you see the two sides of it closing together at that far horizon. And deep in the foundations of your own heart at exactly the same time. That’s how you know it’s where you have to go. That’s how you know it’s the road you have to follow. That’s how you know you have to go. It’s just beyond yourself. Just beyond yourself. It’s where you need to be.

So I think one of the awe-inspiring dynamics of existence is the constant way we’re being invited out of ourselves by our own aging and maturation as our desires change and our horizons change in life, by the people who surround us, who are inviting us out, but in all of our great contemplative and religious traditions, by creation itself, by the natural world. And if you’re a traditionally religious person, it’s also by what’s been called the voice of God. It’s the voice that’s beyond the horizon of what you can imagine for yourself, calling you out from where you are. And it’s interesting to think that many of the pernicious, unhealthy states of human psychology come from refusing that invitation, actually. Why? Because it takes enormous amounts of energy to close yourself down away from what you’re seeing, what you’re hearing, and who you’re with.

And you pay an enormous price for the lack of that intimacy. We think of intimacy between ourselves and another person as physical intimacy. But there’s a physical, joyous intimacy with creation, with the world itself, with our lives, and with our work that’s also possible. And it takes the same kind of invitational vulnerability that’s needed in a physically intimate relationship—a marriage with a lover,a relationship with a partner. It takes that same kind of physical intimacy, although we don’t quite believe it, to establish a proper relationship with our work and with ourselves and our lives. So we can think of a horizon out in the world beyond which we’re being invited. And that’s one of the beautiful things about horizons. That’s what’s awe-inspiring about a beautiful view when you’re on a cliff and you’re looking out over the ocean.

I know you’re in Sintra, in Portugal. I’ve been there. Yeah. And there’s the ocean, the western ocean, that invited the Portuguese out all over the world. And they probably did go out of the world because that invitation was there on a daily basis. So that’s a deep part of your conversational history. But it takes immense energy to turn your eyes away from the sea, if you live next to the sea, to turn off your sense of delight at the arrival of the waves and the tide and all the different changes of light in that sea. So it’s interesting to think that we’re surrounded by an astonishing sea of experience around us that we’re constantly turning our faces away from.

Shai: Yes.

David: And I’ll just take that metaphor of the horizon in another, also very parallel, useful direction. We tend to think of horizons outside of ourselves, but it’s really interesting to think that you have a horizon inside yourself, too. You have a line outside of yourself beyond which you haven’t gone yet that’s calling you, but actually you have one beneath you, too. You have a deeper, darker, more hidden, more centered, and more understanding self that lies beneath the line of your present personality. So the ability to put not only those two horizons in conversation with each other but also what lies below that horizon, that unknown, into conversation with the unknown beyond the horizon outside you. This is the deepest form of awe.

This is what we call mysticism, or religious experience: one unknown inside you meeting one invitational unknown inside you as a human being meeting the invitational unknown that lies beyond the understanding of your world outside you.

Shai: So that’s the principle of conversation about which you write and speak a lot—the conversation between this kind of inner horizon and outer horizon?

David: Yes. I mean, conversation from Latin, and I’m sure it means the same thing in Portuguese, too: inside out, actually converse, and the opposite with the inside and the outside. To bring those two together and create something quite remarkable in the meeting. So in the Zen tradition, which I’ve set for decades, I don’t consider myself a Buddhist, but that’s been my way of paying, getting into deeper states of attention, you could say, as an aid to all the other forms of attention. But the Zen tradition is all about that. Your identity is not this thing you think is you, nor is it. The world that you’re meeting is the place where you meet. And there’s that very ancient Cohen, the very ancient Zen question: what is the sound of one hand clapping?

Which is really just what it’s like to travel through space and time meeting nothing other than yourself? This is a tragedy. Yeah. The sound of one hand clapping is the sound of your isolation, of your exile.

Shai: I see, yeah. I’ve never considered this in this context or this interpretation.

David: Yes. Not meeting anything. Yes. So you’re not this. You’re not. That’s you for this moment. Is that meeting, this conversation you and I are having here, that other people are listening to? This is our identity at the moment. And the vitality of the conversation depends on our mutual attentiveness. How present are you? And there’s this incredible, awe-inspiring. Speaking of awe, So I keep returning to that word because it’s part of your theme.

The awe in absolute presence is absolute disappearance.

Shai: So would you say that, mystically speaking, there is a point in which this conversation is transcended to such a degree that inner and outer merge into one another or no longer exist?

David: No, I think they all exist at the same time. It’s just that you don’t choose between them. You’ve got what you think is you. You’ve got what you think is other than you, and you’ve got the meeting between them both. And all those contexts exist at the same time. And that’s where a good sense of humor comes from, because you have to understand that one of the ways you disappear is through humiliation, through being humiliated. Whatever fancy ideas you have about yourself—this self that’s meeting the world—those fancy ideas and those strange ideas will be tested and often blown apart by the meeting itself. It’s a bit like marriage or a relationship. Before you go into a relationship, you have all of these wonderful ideas about how you’re going to be, how the other person is going to be, and the life you’re going to make together.

And marriage is always something that neither people imagined nor wanted. But that’s it. That’s where you’re meeting. That’s the essence of the conversation. So many of us are in a bad marriage with ourselves at times because we’re just refusing to meet what’s down below that horizon inside ourselves. So it’s like one person just going off and doing whatever they want to do without taking any heed or paying attention to the other person who’s trying to call you back. So I often think many of the dynamics in life have to do with the untethered mind being invited back into the body.

And part of the dynamic, in all of our great meditational traditions, is to clear and open a hallway of silence in the body that the mind can be invited back into so that you can think in a wise way. But if you start from the point of view of thinking, you’re going to end up in trouble. You’re going to be giving the wrong name to your partner, to your work, and to yourself. So the first step in deepening the conversation, as I always say in conversational leadership, is stopping the conversation you’re having now. That’s the first step in deepening the conversation.

Shai: Yes.

David: And then that silence opens up, and in that silence, an invitation also opens up at the same time into the unknown.

Shai: Yes. Perhaps that would be a good moment to ask you to recite enough.

David: Actually. I’ll turn the tables on you now. And you asked me to recite one, and I’ll recite a different one. And it’s a poem called The Bell and the Blackbird, which I wrote right at this desk here and right in front of me. I’ve got two French doors with windows in them. And it’s actually a gorgeous, beautiful late winter, early spring day here, and the sun’s out, and it’s just about now, actually, or maybe in the next couple of weeks, that the red-winged blackbird comes back to the Pacific Northwest. And the red-winged blackbird has the most beautiful song. And when you hear that song for the first time, it’s the sound of springtime. You’ve made it through another winter with this beautiful enunciation. And I was here with the door open, and I heard the sound of the blackbird.

And at the same time, my wife came through that door behind her with two tibetan bells in her hand, and she hit them together just perfectly. You know, half the time you hit tibetan bells together and they make this awful sound, and you didn’t get it right. And then you have to try again until you get it right. No, she hit it the first time, and the note went right through me as I heard this black bullet, a blackbird outside of me. So I said, I can’t talk to you now. I need to write. And she was very good. She went up, and this is the piece that I wrote. It’s called the bell and the blackbird. And here’s the red-winged blackbird; actually, on the book, you can see it there. And the bell is behind. The sound of a bell is still reverberating.

The sound of a bell is still reverberating. Or a blackbird. A blackbird is calling from a corner of the field, asking you to wake into this life. Or inviting you deeper into the one that waits. The sound of a bell is still reverberating. Or a blackbird. A blackbird calls from a corner of the field, asking you to wake up to this life or inviting you deeper into the one that waits. Either way takes courage. Either way, you want to become nothing but that self, which is no self at all. Wants you to become nothing but that self that is no self at all. He wants you to walk to the place where you already know you will have to give every last thing away. The approach is also the meeting itself. Without any meetings at all. That radiance you have always carried with you.

That radiance you have always carried with you as you walk, both alone and completely accompanied in friendship by every corner of creation, is crying hallelujah. Either way takes courage. The sound of a bell is still reverberating. Or a blackbird. A blackbird is calling from a corner of the field, asking you to wake into this life. Or inviting you deeper into the one that waits. Either way takes courage. Either way, you want to become nothing but that self, which is no self at all. He wants you to walk to the place where you already know you will have to give every last thing away. The approach is also the meeting itself. Without any meetings at all. That radiance you have always carried with you as you walk, both alone and completely accompanied in friendship. every corner of creation. Praying hallelujah.

Shai: This really encapsulates our entire discussion.

David: Thank you. Yeah, it’s probably the piece that most carries that seamless experience of awe—the inside and the outside being present—that I’ve ever written. Probably. It’s got a kind of clarity, purity, and presence that I’m very glad to have captured.

Shai: Yes, it must be a precious moment in which you experience that you have succeeded in somehow transporting the unsayable to the realm of the sayable, thus inspiring awe in yourself and your readers. But in a tangible way, it’s no longer elusive.

David: Yeah, there’s a marvellous piece by Pablo Neruda. Where he says that, he’s talking about the first lines of poetry ever written and where that occurred. And something ignited in my soul. Fever or unremembered wings. And I went my own way, deciphering that burning fire. And I wrote the first bare line: pure foolishness. Pure wisdom of one who knows nothing. And suddenly I saw the heavens unfastened and open. Yeah, he captures that. Not knowing.

That’s a deep form of attention when you don’t know who your intimate partner is. When you talk to them as if you don’t know who they are, you have a much deeper conversation than if you think you’re with the person who you’ve given a name to, or even quite often, an affectionate nickname to. You find that many of the names you’ve given to someone you love are actually stopping a deeper form of love from occurring. So the willingness to look at your. I mean, I have a funny little experience every morning when I feed my dogs. I put their bowls down, and they’re trained to sit until I give them the signal to go. But that’s the moment when they look at me with the most intent. They’re looking directly at every fiber of their being.

They’re just completely alert. And I look at them, too, and suddenly it’s not a dog; it’s not a human; it’s just pure. And that’s when I reestablish the foundation of my love for them on a daily basis, because they do try my patience for the rest of the day. But how do we do that with the people we know? And I think one of the awe-inspiring things we learn about another person, for instance, is that they’re always looking for an invitation, just like the world’s always inviting us, but it’s also looking for an invitation for us as individuals to make to it. Come and find me. Come, world. Come and find me just as I am. That’s a really powerful invitation, actually. And it’s a terrible moment in human life when you stop asking that.

You say, Life, stay away from me; it’s too painful. Love, stay away from me; it’s too painful. Relationship, stay away from me; it’s too painful. Work, everything; just leave me alone. So the ability to make an invitation from a foundationally vulnerable place, which is the place where you’re actually open to the world—I mean, vulnerability just comes from the Latin word vul, which means wound. You always make the invitation from the part of you that’s open to the world, whether you want to be open in that way or not. You’re just made that way. You’re made with that particular form of—you can call it woundedness—but it’s also a form of permeability, of openness, where if you close down part of your essential nature.

Shai: I think there is something interesting that I’ve noticed throughout this dialogue: that awe can also be found in the painful and the way you’re describing it, that if we remove the defenses, we are also vulnerable to the pain. Because I think that what struck me was when you recited just beyond yourself prior to this discussion, I wasn’t  aware of the context in which this poem had been written. And then I started realizing that somehow the poem had a sort of alchemical power, transforming grief or a breakup into something beautiful, into something that is awe-inspiring, because that poem is so elevating.

David: Well, I would say that almost all poets begin with grief and distance. Well, I think probably all self-knowledge begins with realizing how much you’re in exile and how many barriers and defenses you’ve put up because of the wounds and traumas you’ve experienced. And no one gets through childhood without wounds and traumas. And so that’s the doorway. That’s the opening. And so it’s very hard to write good poetry without going through, to begin with, the doorway of grief, distance, and exile. But there’s a point at which the most difficult poetry to write is the poetry of awe, contentment, happiness, and most especially, joy. So it’s just a stage where it seems as if you have to be miserable in order to write, to write well, or to be a good artist. It’s just the first doorway.

And as you deepen that apprenticeship and that road into your art, then you’re asked to speak about the privilege of life, the awe that’s in your existence, the invitations, the astonishing life you’ve already lived, actually, and the giftedness of everything. So the hardest art to actually create might be the art of pure presence.

Shai: So I’m very grateful for this conversation. It has been absolutely wonderful. And profoundly inspiring. Thank you so much. Every word you’ve shared with us.

David: You’re very kind and lovely. And I hope I get to see you in Portugal sometime. I hope for that.