David Whyte

David Whyte’s Consolations use everyday words to present us with a prism through which to better understand ourselves and the lives we walk through. At the request of readers globally, Whyte returns with fifty-two short, elegant meditations on a single word ranging from ‘Anxiety’ to ‘Body’, ‘Freedom’, ‘Shame’ and ‘Moon’. He embraces their nuances, amplitudes and depths, and, in doing so, confronts realities that many of us would spend a lifetime trying senselessly to avoid.In Consolations II, anxiety might be more mercifully understood as the preparation for being hurt, fixed beliefs are recognised as the very places where we do not wish to understand, guilt is a friend compassionately waiting for us to catch up and routine becomes a form of ritual and worship. Each piece in this life-affirming book is an invitation to slow down, shift our perspective and find comfort. In these pages, Whyte explores the full constellation of human experience.

After many years of revising the essays, author David Whyte has published this revised edition of his well loved book. In addition to sharper versions of many of the essays, it contains an additional piece, To consciously become close is a form of unilateral disarmament, a chancing of our arm and our love, a willingness to hazard our affections and an unconscious declaration that we might be equal to the inevitable loss that the vulnerability of being close will bring.With the imagery of a poet and the reflection of a philosopher, David Whyte turns his attention to 52 ordinary words, each its own particular doorway into the underlying currents of human life.

Drawing from his own experience and the lives of some of the world's great writers and poets, David Whyte brings compelling insights to our three most important commitments—to another, to our work, and to ourselves—to frame a complete picture of a satisfying life. David Whyte knows there are three crucial relationships, or marriages, in our lives: the marriage or partnership with a significant other, the commitment we have to our work, and the vows, spoken or unspoken, we make to an inner, constantly developing self. In The Three Marriages, the bestselling author, poet, and speaker argues that it is not possible to sacrifice one relationship for the others without causing deep psychological damage. Too often, he says, we fracture our lives and split our energies foolishly, so that one or more of these marriages is sacrificed and may wither and die, in the process impoverishing them all. Whyte looks to a different way of seeing and connecting these relationships and prompts us to examine each marriage with a fierce but affectionate eye as he shows us the importance of cherishing all three equally. Drawing from his own struggles to achieve this goal as well as exploring the lives of some of the world's great writers and activists—from Dante to Joan of Arc, from Austen to Dickinson—Whyte reveals that our core commitments are irrevocably connected. Only by understanding the simultaneously robust and delicate nature of the three marriages and the stages of their maturation, he maintains, can we create a real portrait of what makes us tick and a real sense of finding a place in the world. In prose that's at once lyrical and inviting, Whyte investigates captivating ideas for bringing a deeper satisfaction to our lives, one that goes beyond our previously held ideas of balance.

Crossing the Unknown Sea is about reuniting the imagination with our day to day lives. It shows how poetry and practicality, far from being mutually exclusive, reinforce each other to give every aspect of our lives meaning and direction. For anyone who wants to deepen their connection to their life’s work — or find out what their life’s work is — this book can help navigate the way. Whyte encourages readers to take risks at work that will enhance their personal growth, and shows how burnout can actually be beneficial and used to renew professional interest. He asserts that too many people blindly trudge through a mediocre work life because so many “busy” tasks prevent significant reflection and analysis of job satisfaction. People often turn to spiritual practice or religion to nurture their souls, but overlook how work can actually be our greatest opportunity for discovery and growth. Crossing the Unknown Sea combines poetry, gifted storytelling and Whyte’s personal experience to reveal work’s potential to fulfill us and bring us closer to ultimate freedom and happiness.

In this book, poet David Whyte turns his attention to the deepest longing of human beings - the desire to belong to people and places and the many ways of experiencing a sense of home. The House of Belonging has sold over 50,000 copies and contains some of his most beloved poems, such as The Truelove, The Journey, and Sweet Darkness. The deeply moving title poem reads as balm and benediction to wherever one finds one's home in the world, and taken together, the collection illuminates the myriad ways we belong - to others, to ourselves, and to the world.

It is not a coincidence that this book will slide easily into your jacket pocket; you ll want to keep it close for unexpected moments, those gifts of small, beckoning spaciousness amidst all our obligations and necessities.In addition to works written over a span of many years, plus one new poem and one new essay, the book contains David s personal reflections for many of the pieces, providing deeper context to its meaning.In some ways an artistic representation of a close circle of companionship to the work and to the man : edited by his wife, and designed and typeset by close friends Edward Wates and John Nielson, the book forms an elegant testament to David Whyte's most closely-held understanding - that human life cannot be apportioned out as one thing or another; rather, it is best lived as a living conversation, a way between and beyond, made beautiful by darkness as well as light, at its essence both deeply solitary and profoundly communal.

“With this insightful book, David Whyte offers people in corporate life an opportunity to reach into the forgotten and ignored creative life (their own and the corporation’s) and literally water their souls with it. The result is a very well written book that can truly heal.”—Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PH.D., author of Women Who Run With the Wolves and The Gift of Story Find professional and personal fulfilment through the poetry of both classic and modern masters—now revised and updated Has your work lost its meaning? Have you forgotten the goals you hoped to achieve when you began your career? Are you afraid of pursuing your dreams? In The Heart Aroused , David Whyte brings his unique perspective as poet and consultant to the workplace, showing readers how fulfilling work can be when they face their fears and follow their dreams. Going beneath the surface concerns about products and profits, organization and order, Whyte addresses the needs of the heart and soul, and the fears and desires that many workers keep hidden.At a time when corporations are calling on employees for more creativity, dedication, and adaptability, and workers are trying desperately to balance home and work, this revised edition of The Heart Aroused is the essential guide to reinvigorating the soul.

David Whyte's body of work reflects the depth and breadth of a maturing artist, taking its readers on a passage through time and place, allowing us to bear witness to the constellation of difficulties, triumphs, adventures, losses, hopes and revelations that have shaped one particular human life. RIVER FLOW contains over one hundred poems selected from five previously published works, together with twenty-three new poems, including a tribute to an Ethiopian woman navigating her first escalator, a meditation of love and benediction for his young daughter, and a cycle of Irish poems that convey his deep love of the land and life-long appreciation for its wisdom. Within its covers are poems to be read and reread, poems that are sure to become companions on our own passage through the turbulent waters of a well-lived, well-loved life.

Essential Skills for a Full and Courageous LifeWhen you think about personal transformation, do you have a picture of who you want to become? Many of us unconsciously create an idealized image of our “awakened” selves―and in doing so, reveals David Whyte, we undermine both the work and reward of genuine transformation.On What to Remember When Waking , this celebrated poet and teacher offers wisdom for building the essential disciplines that will see us through the difficulties of our human journey―skills of trust, vulnerability, momentum, and courage in the face of the unknown.Engage in the Great Conversation That Defines Your LifeOur lives are defined by what David Whyte calls the “great conversation”―a give- and-take relationship between our vision of ourselves and the unfolding mystery of reality. Yet there are many conscious and unconscious ways that we often avoid living at this ever-moving frontier. Do you diminish life by attempting to assign names to everything instead of living more robustly with the unknown? Are you turning a blind eye to the invisible help that is all around you? With penetrating insight and gentle guidance, Whyte illuminates the core competencies that you must build in order to fully engage in the richness that life offers―and to express your true work in the world.What You Can Plan Is Too Small for You to Live“We do not always move forward because of the plans we make or the effort we expend,” teaches David Whyte. “The conversation itself more often does the true work of transformation.” Make sure the conversation is alive and everything takes its place. Combining a teacher’s ability to provide practical guidance with a poet’s insight into the depths of the human soul, he presents a powerful resource for anyone seeking growth and fulfillment on life’s journey with What to Remember When Waking .Start where you are―ways of recognizing the first necessary steps to find your path• The gift of vulnerability―why lowering our defenses can enhance our perception, dedication, and joyfulness• Disciplines for cultivating the “fierce interior focus” that helps you maintain momentum in your life’s work• How embracing the feeling that you are out of place in the world can deepen your empathy and compassion for others• The art of knowing when to let your dreams mature in their own time• Beyond the "pursuit of happiness"―opening yourself to the deeper fulfillment available in the high and low points of life• Becoming an "apprentice to life"―how to approach new challenges with a sense of humility and wonder• Learning to delight in the unknown instead of trying to control it through labels and beliefs• Building a mature and welcoming relationship with death by embracing the richness that fragility brings to life• Over 5 1/2 hours of David Whyte's insights, poetry, and essential lessons for fully expressing your gifts in the world

The title of David Whyte's fifth volume of poetry is an apt description of its contents. Everything, he points out, is indeed waiting for us, including our own demise and the demise of those we love. In less eloquent hands, this wisdom might feel burdensome, but in Whyte's language and imagery, these poems convey the beauty inherent in impermanence. Its second chapter, Thresholds, charts the experience of death of a loved one, and Friends, Marriage, Chances and Returns celebrate and explore the relationships, including the relationship with ourself, that accompany us along the journey, for however short or long we're given.

"In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in a dark wood, where the true way was wholly lost." When you find yourself suddenly without bearings, as Dante Alighieri voiced so well centuries ago, where will you look for guidance?Throughout the ages, teaches David Whyte, the language of poetry has held a special power to hazard ourselves boldly at the fierce edges of our lives. On Midlife and the Great Unknown , you will engage with poetic imagination as it was meant to be as your companion and guide for the challenging terrain of midlife. Join this Yorkshire-born poet and bestselling author to Radical simplification―an invitation to sit in silent reflection and observation• Using your poetic imagination to navigate life's cycles of loss and joy• Honoring who you are right now, including your skills and limitations, and moreThe language of poetry can emancipate you into the next phase of your existence, teaches David Whyte. It can help you break through obstacles and give you courage to take necessary risks. Drawing from the wisdom of fellow poets Rainer Maria Rilke, Emily Dickinson, and Seamus Heaney, Whyte invites you to boldly engage in a conversation with the second half of your life on Midlife and the Great Unknown Excerpted from the full-length audio course Clear Mind, Wild Heart .

From Amazon:In his 7th volume of poetry, David Whyte looks at the great questions of human life through the eyes of the pilgrim: someone passing through relatively quickly, someone dependent on friendship, hospitality and help from friends and strangers alike, someone for whom the nature of the destination changes step by as it approaches, and someone who is subject to the vagaries of wind and weather along the way. The poems in Pilgrim explore themes of departure, shelter, companionship, deep friendship and the necessary transformations of friendship, the struggles at crucial thresholds and the arrivals that always become further departures, offering companionship along the way.

The House of Belonging has sold over 100,000 copies and contains some of his most beloved

Requited or unrequited, to love is to move between homecoming and exile, between the presence and absence of our beloved as well as ourselves. In this collection, human desire pulls with the force and rhythm of a sea tide, emerging from and receding into mysteries larger than any individual life. The book begins with the reverential title poem and concludes with four works that reflect the power of place to shape revelation; the way stone and sky and birdsong can point the way home. Whether tracing the sensual devotion of bodily presence or the painful heartbreak of impermanence, the poems keep faith with love's appearances and disappearances, and the promises we make and break on its behalf.

"In the middle of the road of my life, I awoke in a dark wood, where the true way was wholly lost." When you find yourself without bearings, as Dante Alighieri voiced so well centuries ago, where will you look for guidance?Throughout the ages, teaches David Whyte, the language of poetry has held the power to lend us courage, to give us the vision of those who endured, and to hazard ourselves boldly at the fierce edges of our lives. On Clear Mind, Wild Heart you will join this acclaimed poet and teacher to engage with the poetic imagination as your companion and guide for the difficult terrain we are all traversing.Poetry, teaches Whyte, offers immediate and powerful tools unique from any other tradition. It can help us to see beyond the fragile surfaces of our lives, open us to the universal cycles and patterns that shape our lives, and awaken our conversation with what has been called the Untouchable, the Numinous, or the Eternal.Clear Mind, Wild Heart guides you into the wellspring of this living poetic tradition through six hours of exploration and poetry with David Whyte, including the verses of such inspired voices as Emily Dickinson, William Blake, W.B. Yeats, Marina Tsvetayeva, Rainer Maria Rilke, Antonio Machado, and others. Through their words, you will discover how to apprentice yourself to beauty and find a place of belonging where you can hold loss and grief, the challenges of change, and the wonder of new discovery and adventure.The language of poetry takes us outside of our small selves and calls us to look at ourselves and the world with open eyes, teaches David Whyte. Whether you are a lifelong poetry lover or new to its insights and pleasures, Clear Mind, Wild Heart is an inspiring guide to answering that call.Learn More Finding the courage to hazard yourself in the world• Emily Dickinson on the alive-ness of words• Conversing with the unknowable• The harvest of your attention• How the language of poetry teaches us a relationship with silence• Goethe's Holy Longing• Apprenticing yourself to beauty• Blake's reflections on innocence and experience• Creating a house of belonging through speech and imagination• Work, the pilgrimage into identity• Who are you? How presence shrives you of your old identity• Encountering the visitations of loss, grief, and defeat• The poetic spirit in marriage, parenting, and friendship• Six hours of exploration, as taught in David Whyte's acclaimed seminars and retreats

The poems in Still Possible pay homage to the invisible passage of time - the deep, private current that wends through our lives as a steadfast companion, sculpting our interior worlds as inexorably and exquisitely as its visible manifestations. Whyte turns his eye, and his pen, to the possibilities and harvests this shaping reveals: the shyness and vulnerability of love, the illusion of imperfections, and the new invitations that beckon along the way.The poems reflect an abiding faith in time's wisdom: a journey turned away from in youth waits patiently for later maturity; an early experience ripens in secret to reveal, decades later, a full understanding. Under Whyte's poet-philosopher gaze, a rain-soaked in an Irish farmhouse becomes a meditation on the essence of a truly good day: a settled contentment, alert and open to whatever may call. Plus sheep, Seamus Heaney and a dog.Powerful language rests on a foundation of what isn't said, a silence underpinning the eloquence of articulation. In this way, Still Possible hovers above the numinous and the unknowable - what we pray for, what we pass on, what mystery awaits and, in the end, what it might mean to be happy.

Where Many Rivers Poems

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The Courage to Embrace the Gifts and Losses in LifeIf you never knew disappointment, would you ever grow? If you had never felt loss, could you have compassion for another? Without real heartache, would you ever know the greatness of love? On When the Heart Breaks , David Whyte invites you to join him in an investigation of a question that rests at the center of human experience. With a poet’s insight into the landscape of the soul, he offers a deeply moving exploration of how we experience beauty and loss―and how with resilience and time we can rise again each time we are broken.“There is no path we can walk that will not take us through some form of heartbreak,” David Whyte tells us. “And to accept that truth is to give a merciful gift to ourselves.” So often our hearts break because the love we offer―whether to a partner, a friend, a child, our work, or a place―is not returned to us in the same way. Yet if we retreat from the experience of unrequited love, we miss the opportunity to discover the countless invisible ways that the world offers us its love in return, often unlooked for and unrecognized.Being fully open to both joy and sadness, says David Whyte, helps us to develop a more beautiful mind―a mind that embraces the hidden riches of life. We learn to apprentice ourselves to the great and small difficulties that test the edges of our identity and lead us into greater and greater understanding. With words to inspire laughter, courage, and deep reflection, David Whyte invites you to join him in the great conversation that takes us into the exquisite vulnerability of the unknown―the way a heartbreak can make us more humble, more aware, and expand our ability to love.

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David looks at the invitation inherent in any human life to winnow through surface concerns and discover the deeper questions.

Internationally acclaimed poet and author David Whyte and celebrated film score composer Jeff Rona collaborate to take listeners on a poetic and auditory passage through the thresholds of understanding that mark the seasons of a human life. The constellation of meditative poems and haunting musical accompaniments echo themes of faith, courage, exile and homecoming, including "Everything is Waiting for You," an evocative and imaginative tribute to the way ordinary objects call us to belong to a larger world. With a poignant blessing to a young daughter and an admonition to begin each journey with the ground beneath our feet, "Sometimes" is a moving invitation to participate more fully in the deep current of existence.

A talk by David Whyte. 2 Disc set.Disc 1: Another form of conversation /Relationship to the unknown /The song of the lark /Testing your mystery in the world /Coming to ground /Learning to say noDisc 2: Different forms of beauty / The necessity of heartbreak / The beauty of motherhood / Letting go of outer beauty / Courage to accept life's invitation