The Fountain of Dark Silence

‘Above the eternal tranquility’ – Isaac Levitan, 1894 – WikiArt

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“There is a fountain inside you.
Don’t walk around
with an empty bucket.”
~ Rumi

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Dorothy Walters is my newly invited guest on ‘The Dawn Within’. The ‘fountain’ refers here to this deep source at the core of our being, this “fountain of dark silence”, as Dorothy wrote in one of her poems. Dorothy experienced a profound Kundalini awakening in 1981, at the age of 53, which she described as “God moving through your body”, “the Beloved within“, “the goddess above all other goddesses”, or a “relentless agony of ascent”. This was her first expression of the ‘fountain inside’, a fountain of bliss in which she dipped again and again until, as she beautifully expresses in one poem:

“… nothing is left of us
but a fine ash
at the core
and then that, too, melting
to a nothingness,
a no place,
only a marker
where a somebody,
a something
once was.”
(Marrow of Flame)

Profoundly transformed by her experience, Dorothy began writing numerous spontaneous poems which are the direct expressions of the beauty and freshness of this inexhaustible source. They have been gathered in her website “Kundalini Splendor”, and in her numerous books.

Dorothy spent most of her youth as a lover of language and books. She took a PhD in English and American literature and taught both classical and contemporary literature at university. She had a life-long interest in some of the great poets and philosophers like W.B. Yeats, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and later on Rumi, Hafiz, Mirabai and Kabir, which had a deep influence on her poetry. She also helped to found one of the earlier women’s studies programs in the U. S. and directed it for many years. She continues sharing and writing on the subject of Kundalini awakening to this day. After an extended residence in San Francisco, Dorothy now lives and writes in Colorado. I have selected here a few of her poems, which are like the “raw honey of God”. I hope you will enjoy…

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“Turn me to gold.”
~ Kabir

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Preparing to Meet the Goddess

Do not think of her
unless you are prepared
to be driven to your limits,
to rush forth from yourself
like a ritual bowl overflowing
with sacramental wine.

Do not summon her image
unless you are ready to be blinded,
to stand in the flash
of a center exploding,
yourself shattering into the landscape,
wavering bits of bark and water.

Do not speak her name
until you have said good-bye
to all your familiar trinkets –
your mirrors, your bracelets,
your childhood adorations –
From now on you are nothing,
a ghost sighing at the window,
a voice singing under water.

(from ‘Unmasking the Rose’) 

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Dreamers Beneath the Quilts

I can’t think, really,
how far we have come
on this road.

Maybe we have travelled
nowhere,
maybe we are still in the same
place
from which we started,
dreamers beneath the quilts,
imagining they are on a journey.

Yet, how beautiful it has been,
ripe sunsets,
snow quieting the hills,
stunning silences of midnight joy,
yourself awake and yawning,
what an astonishing dream
we have had,
wondering
who sent it down,
how it was conceived,
addressing thanks now
“to whom it may concern.”

(February 9, 2017)

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‘Spring. High waters.’ – Isaac Levitan, 1897 – WikiArt

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The Evolute

If you wish to transmute,
open yourself to change.
Let the vibrations of transmutation
flow through your being
like a gentle wind caressing a rose
that opens its mouth to rain,
a bud that waits
for the awakening sun.
Yes, you can hear without ears,
see without eyes.
These are done by the invisibles
again and again,
even without your knowing
or recognition.
But if you are wed
to the realm
of the senses,
you will not reach
the kingdom I describe.
You will reject its perfections
for a world more familiar,
and wonder why anyone
would desire to enter
the realm of the immutable —
you will be content to remain
where you are, perishable
as a shadow in moonlight.
You will never know
the world of
formless beyond form,
the permanent after the ephemeral,
the embrace of ultimate bliss,
union with the unseen divine.
You will never find
your cosmic lover,
trembling as the earth shudders,
shaking within as secret love enters,
all in time with the leaf that wavers
now in your chest. 

(November 20, 2020)

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Green Silk

It is only 
the unanswerable questions
that matter —
the sky hovering over you,
sometimes coming close.
others fleeing away,
the frosted tides of heaven
rushing outward
from the shore.

And heaven brings always
a questioning
of the eternals,
the verities you grew up with
never took you far enough.
Who are you? Why did you come?
What is your secret name?

Someday, you think,
it will happen.
The clouds will part,
there will be a clap of thunder,
a message or a messenger will
descend highlighted in storm…
This one will bring an answer,
the pieces of the puzzle
will fly together
and you will say,
oh, yes, now I see it all,
the pattern come clear.

In the meantime,
the blossoming quince 
has come back again,
the inscrutable redwoods still
guard the gates,
green silk soothes 
earth’s swollen breasts. 

(March 18, 2008)

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Another One for the Beloved

I know.
I am the one who keeps forgetting,
going off on some strange excursion
into my favorite dreamscapes,
that important phone call
I must make now,
the latest article calling me.

And so for a time
nothing happens between us.
As if our messages got
lost in the mail,
or were sent to
the wrong address,

Meanwhile You
are waiting patiently.
Silent witness ready for my
inevitable return.

(August 30, 2018)

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‘Water lilies. Nenuphar.’ – Isaac Levitan, 1895 – WikiArt

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The Rose Opening

Listen . . . . listen . . . . 
can you hear those honey drops fall
from the mouth of god?

Can you feel the rose
opening
in your spine?

Whatever you were before
now you are only this.

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Do you want
words
or feelings?
Or are they melted together
like the love streaming
from your lover’s eye
meeting the love
pouring from your own?

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Does anyone else
feel this love?
Like the breath 
of a thousand rose gardens
dreaming that they are petals
crushed in god’s hand.

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Is this from this world
or another ….
do these words have meanings
or are they mere love cries
from that one
come to kiss you awake again.

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God has a thousand names
and I but one tongue
to tell them.

Some call me a wastrel,
some a wanton.
All I want 
is to dance this dance
we do so well together.

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Are you looking for the goddess?
she is
the lash on god’s eye,
the invisible hand 
stroking your velvet flesh alive,
the pearl 
you found under your tongue
this morning.

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All this time together
and still you have not told me
who I am,
where this journey leads.

(August 22, 2007)

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Poems by Dorothy Walters

Paintings by Isaac Levitan (1860-1900)

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Listen to this beautiful conversation between Dorothy Walters and Brenda McMorrow on YouTube…

Bibliography:
– ‘The Goddess Speaks: Poems of Ecstasy and Transfiguration’ – by Dorothy Walters – (Emergence Education)
– ‘The Kundalini Poems: Reflections of Radiance and Joy’ – by Dorothy Walters – (Emergence Education)
– ‘Marrow of Flame: Poems of the Spiritual Journey’ – by Dorothy Walters – (Poetry Chaikhana)
– ‘The Ley Lines of the Soul: Poems of Ecstasy and Ascension’ – by Dorothy Walters – (Xlibris)
– ‘A Cloth of Fine Gold, Poems of the Inner Journey’ – by Dorothy Walters – (Lulu.com)
– ‘Unmasking the Rose: A Record of a Kundalini Initiation’ – by Dorothy Walters – (Hampton Roads Publishing)
– ‘Kundalini Wonder: The god/goddess in Your Body’ – by Dorothy Walters – (Emergence Education)
– ‘Moonlight on a Night Moth’s Wing: A Fusion of Image and Word’ – by Rashani Réa and Dorothy Walters – (Rashani\Rea)

Websites:
– Kundalini Splendor (Dorothy’s website)
– Isaac Ilyich Levitan (Wikipedia)

 

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