Flower of the Mind

The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or, “with the flower of the mind;” not with the intellect, used as an organ, but with the intellect released from all service, and suffered to take its direction from its celestial life, or, as the ancients were wont to express themselves, not with intellect alone, but with the intellect inebriated by nectar. As the traveler who has lost its way, throws his reins on his horse’s neck, and trusts to the instinct of the animal to find his road, so must we do with the divine animal who carries us through the world. For if in any manner we can stimulate this instinct, new passages are opened for us in nature, the mind flows into and through things hardest and highest, and the metamorphosis is possible.

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1844 essay, The Poet does speak with the “Flower of the Mind” as he describes the basic units of consciousness that carry us through this world. His presence is the result of his poised consciousness choosing its perceptions from a predictable field that is connected to a greater field of organization. Emerson’s words are not about past history as much as they are a comprehension of future probabilities. His cells like all cells are precognitive.

That’s the instinct that dwells in the unknown channels of our mind and manifest in artistic expressions that wildly speak from a world that recognizes the intellect as an organ, but uses the nectar of consciousness to break it down, and reassemble it to create a metamorphosis that we call enlightenment or thinking with no mind.

The world of the artist blinks on and off pulsating from one creative impulse to another. Atoms, molecules, electrons and other phenomena are constantly in motion and the holes of non-existence that exists within the blinking are filled with selectivity. The blinking chooses significant experiences around which life is felt. The automatic sensations of one kind of life create barriers for other world schemes that don’t correlate or are not in sync with selective personal blinking. The blinking in and out of realities is always an individual experience that is realized as awareness drops from the curtain of separation.

Like the flower that blooms from its bulb we are consciousness from the bulb of our essence. We are modern day cavemen that venture out into the daylight of our objective awareness to explore the dimensions of selfhood that exist between the holes of selectivity that are comfortable and familiar. New passages open as the self recognizes that it is only one petal in the flower of the mind.