On Reverie

Reverie speaks, because first it has listened.

Robert Romanyshyn

Listened to what?  To depths of the soul waiting for us in silence to move away from distractions or the thousand of pulls in any day that removes us from being fully present to the naked moment in which reverie and its awakenings have the space to arise with many precious insights and gifts.

The awakenings to an other world that we discover through reverie are slow to emerge, we may not always be able to catch them, when they arise unbidden on their own schedule from the depths.  We may meet discover reverie with a noticing of the soft glint of afternoon sun falling upon our feet as we trample through a crusty carpet of dappled leaves, we may sense it when we look into our puppy’s adoring eyes.

We often say ‘one is lost in reverie’ but isn’t it truer that in reverie we are finding depths or glimpses of infinitude formerly obscured?  The world may be feeling our absence and so trying to pull us back to so called ‘reality’, but should we listen or keep our ears and eyes tuned deep within?   Do we really need to be found?

Reverie is the voice of dust and clouds, (the breathing soul of things), flowers and the ocean, stars and stones, the colours of nature and the terrible presence of the Angel (or the Devil?) speaking through us, lending us in return something of their animating spirit.  When words flow from reverie, when, haltingly, we begin to find a voice in grief, we can wonder who is now speaking.  Henri Bosco in L’antiquaire says, “All the being of the world, if it dreams, dreams that it is speaking.”  Grief and the mood of reverie which is its companion, lets us in on this secret kinship between us and the world.

Reverie is a surrender of the desire to know things so that we might once again, at least for a moment, be with them.  A knowing which springs solely out of utility always needs and wants to do something with what it knows. Reverie is a way of being present to the world which wants nothing and needs nothing from things.  In this respect, it is so much like the world of grief, when I wanted nothing because I was nothing.

How many of us can surrender to being nothing in a world which makes constant demands of us to be or prove something?   Are we a threat to others when the emptying and dissolution of grief suddenly makes us an individual who demands nothing and has no presence to give?  I am reminded of a past partner who had zero tolerance for reverie, and of those who often ask me what  I do all day in these later years as I have begun to live a more contemplative life. I am sure so many of us know people like this.  The word ‘do’ in this sentence when it is said is often tinged with a hyper or manic edge and we are looked upon askance for not having produced or proved something.

One of my favourite lines comes from the Tao Te Ching :

Other people have a purpose

I alone don’t know

I drift like a wave on the ocean

I blow as aimless as the wind

Can you sense the concerned gaze of someone in response to such words?  I can.  But I think that deep down many of us gain great comfort from sitting on the shore listening to the ocean waves breathe in and out as they flow in and retreat along the sand.  In this quiet place we understand deeply in a space so far beyond words that the soul of the world and its heart constantly goes on beating and breathing whether or not we are obsessed with our own dreams and plans.

When such plans are laid to waste or revealed as illusions we finally stop and may even surrender for a lost moment to reverie allowing it to carry us or blow us or allow us to drift at it’s bidding.  Can we surrender at just such a moment all of our frentic empty doing and demands to understand or find solutions or answers; to just to be and rest for some time deep in the soul quenching expanse of reverie?