Daily Mystic Messages - The Daffodils
Today, I want to share with you a poem that was shared with me by my Vedanta teacher in India, Swami Parthasarathy, and the poem is “The Daffodils” by William Wordsworth.
It goes like this...
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
I love this poem for so many reasons, but one of the biggest ones is that it beautifully depicts a kind of coming out of ourselves and seeing and experiencing the joy of life and this beautiful dance that we are a part of. I also love how the author became so enraptured that he didn't even realize at that moment that he was just all into it, but it's something that he keeps coming back to when he has those quiet moments.
He comes back to that place of joy and that place of solitude; that place where he is in this dance and seeing this dance. And when I think about that with respect to ourselves and with respect to self-love, it is like being in that dance with life within ourselves, seeing that beautiful expression of life that we are, that divine spark shining through, and the kind of unique gifts and talents that we have to share with the world.
This unique expression of life that we are and bringing that out into the world- that's a dance, that's a joyful dance and it's something that we can actually come back to in ourselves.
It takes a little bit of quietude and it takes a willingness to just allow ourselves to be in that dance. So whether we're feeling amazing or not so amazing about ourselves, we get to be in the dance of joy in accepting ourselves exactly as we are.