Have you ever caught yourself engaged in negative thoughts? Does your mind ever tend to go off on tangents, seemingly without your consent? How do you manage your mind when it appears to be doing its own thing? How do you stay positive when your thoughts keep drifting back to something negative?
A few weeks ago I spent some time at a retreat in the mountains. While there I met a man, this man gave me “The Gift” of poetry. A book of poems by the poet Shams-ud-din Muhammad HAFIZ, who lived in the 1300s. Yes, I have enjoyed some old poems by poets such as Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou, but I had never been interested enough in poetry to ever consider reading poems written so very long ago. 
Honestly, although the gesture was extremely considerate and nice, I was more excited about the lesson embedded in the experience of receiving the gift than I was about the gift itself. A stranger giving me a gift, his book of poetry was random and odd but I relished in the possibilities of what I might learn. I wasn’t sure if the lesson was in the act of him giving me the book or within the pages of the book. So though I wasn’t completely sold on the idea of reading poems from the 1300s, I immediately committed to the full exploration of “The Gift”. I knew without a doubt that something about the experience had at its core an opportunity for me to develop a little more into the best version of me and it was my duty to take the opportunity.
So here’s what happened, I was originally going to just jump right into the poems especially since I found a little note right in the middle of the book. The note bookmarked a poem that specifically addressed the purpose of the retreat we were attending. I figured he must have meant for me to start there and keep it moving. The issue was I had to read that poem several times trying to “make sense” of it. I mean, I knew what it was about but I didn’t completely get what Hafiz was really trying to convey through the poem. I read another one to see if I would also have to “make sense” of it, I did. I literally said to myself “I’m not sure I’ll make it through all these poems, they require too much thinking”.
After reading those first two poems, I decided if I was going to give “The Gift” a real chance I should start from the beginning like I do every other book I read. The poems are preceded by what I gather to be a very brief introduction to the life of Hafiz. Although brief, the introduction provided just enough for me to suddenly become excited about the fascinating life of this poet and the work produced from that life. After reading the first poem presented in the book I decided not to read the next until I had pondered the first one to the point of being able to explain it if I had to. For two days the words of that first poem floated in and out of my head. I considered what stage of life Hafiz may have been in when he wrote it. I thought about what it might have meant to someone in the 1300s and what it meant to me now. Thinking about that poem so much made me feel a little weird but I also found it exciting and comforting.
I followed this little pattern for the next couple of weeks. I slowly moved from one poem to the next but never moving on until I felt I had reached the point of being able to explain my understanding of each poem.
In the mist of this new poem experience I was having, I received a very annoying text from someone. I allowed the message in that text to change my mood, I got angry. I started having all types of negative thoughts about the person. My mind started to do what minds do, it went on a rampage. I lost control of my thoughts for about 15 minutes before I really became acutely aware of how deep I had gone.
I am a person who knows and understands the power of the mind. Intellectually I can speak for hours on the power of keeping our thoughts positive and focused on gratitude but sometimes I fall short of that very thing. The Great Morpheus from the movie the Matrix said: “There is a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path”. I try to walk it as much as I can but the best version of me is still in progress. With each instance of losing control of my thoughts, I try to commit to gaining control faster the next time.
So, when I realized that almost 15 minutes had passed and my mind was still focused on the person, the text, and all the negative history with this person, I had to snap out of it. I had to take responsibility for and change what was going on in my head and how I had suddenly started to feel. I’m not sure how or why but my mind immediately went to the poem I had been pondering. I thought of the words and where I had come with my understanding of the poem, I thought again of Hafiz’s life story and where he might have been emotionally while writing the poem and I thought about what he was trying to convey through the poem. I literally felt the shift in my energy, again I felt lighthearted and comforted.
My lesson was learning how to use a new tool, a tool that can actually help me manage my mind. I found power in purposely pondering poetry. It can give the mind an exist from negative thought patterns. The couple of weeks that I had been reading and pondering those poems had literally trained my brain without me even realizing it. What an amazing lesson, what an invaluable gift. Earlier I wrote, “a stranger gave me a gift, it was random and odd”. The truth is another one of my earth school teachers was revealed to me. This teacher would not be a long-term teacher, in fact, his only duty was to be generous enough to give me one of his beloved books of poetry, he fulfilled his duty. I gained a new love for an old art, I learned the power of purposely pondering poetry, and most importantly I was reminded that in life we never meet strangers, we meet our teachers.
Peace, Love, Blessings, & Continued Learning!
