A Consciousness Enriched Sky

Evening Clouds Something like a cloud is spread over the sky, The earth, too, is something like cloud.

Fingers stripped of their gold foil, Overspread the earth, black as cloud shadows.

At sunset, when clouds burst into flame, The fingers move.

Shinkichi Takahashi’s poetry is an Eastern mind adventure that tickles our mental taste buds and challenges our Western perceptions. The meaning of his words seems to be tucked away in a Japanese vault of wisdom; our limited ideas about the self conflict with his Eastern esoteric thoughts. While seeking the essence of his work, we find the conscious mind and our ego wrapped around a poet’s world that is spread over a consciousness enriched sky.

All intense aspirations and unconscious motivations manifest and wait for the approval or disapproval of the conscious mind. Our thoughts produce results, and when they are habitually repeated they become beliefs and truths. These beliefs and truths seem to have a permanent effect on the mind so we rarely examine them until we are assaulted by physical difficulties that change the nature of our reality.

We may blame others, or our own childhood upbringing for these negative experiences. We may also blame God or the devil and hold them responsible if our religious beliefs are rooted in separation. Or we may simply say “that’s life” and accept the negatives as necessary aspects of being physical.

When we begin to realize that we create our experiences through our concentrated thoughts, emotions and beliefs, the clouds of negativity burst into flames. The energy of the conscious mind is free to choose another thought that alters the conditions that cause us the discomfort and diminish our creativity.