The ears of my ears awake – Poetry as a portal to personal and transpersonal growth

Abstract

Many people have experienced an ‘awakening’ which has led to positive changes in their lives, and a sense of an enhanced reality. In ‘The Leap’, Steve Taylor (2017) documents the different catalysts for an awakening experience and describes how a transformation may be gradual or sudden, conclusive or temporary. In my work over the past twenty years using poetry therapy techniques with groups, I have often witnessed how a poem facilitates insights and acts as a portal into an enhanced reality. This familiar experience was suddenly made new for me when I read an account by Eckhart Tolle of the first flowers blooming on this planet (Tolle, 2005). Taylor (2017, ibid) notes that spiritual literature can facilitate awakening. He describes how poetry ‘encourages stillness in the reader’ because it requires attentiveness and receptivity. In this reflective essay, I will look at three characteristics of poetry as an art form that may be factors in facilitating awakening, namely: form, rich ambiguity and metaphor, and include reflections on the similarities between poems and flowers.