Everything Falls Away
The Thread
“Sooner or later, everything falls away.
You, the work you’ve done, your successes,
large and small, your failures, too. Those
moments when you were light, alongside
the times you became one with the night.
The friends, the people you loved
who loved you, those who might have wished
you ill, none of this is forever. All of it is
soon to go, or going, or long gone.
Everything falls away, except the thread
you’ve followed, unknowing, all along.
The thread that strings together all you’ve
been and done, the thread you didn’t know
you were tracking until, toward the end,
you see that the thread is what stays
as everything else falls away.
Follow that thread as far as you can and
you’ll find that it does not end, but weaves
into the unimaginable vastness of life. Your
life never was the solo turn it seemed to be.
It was always part of the great weave of
nature and humanity, an immensity we
come to know only as we follow our own
small threads to the place where they
merge with the boundless whole.
Each of our threads runs its course, then
joins in life together. This magnificent tapestry –
this masterpiece in which we live forever.”
Everything Falls Away - Peter J. Palmer
inspired by The Thread by William Stafford
Palmer might just as well have called his poem “The Thread of Unknowing,” as in truth this is the default condition of our time here on earth. For reasons I do not know, we are forced to drink the lethe before we incarnate; we are forced to forget the tapestry and find ourselves as a single thread, often at loose ends (pun intended,) and fraying at the edges.
It is not an easy task to uncover the hidden pattern, or remember our past lives, which frequently explain the underlying motives and energies in our current relationships and external situations. For it is a larger picture, or a bigger tapestry than we are usually aware of. A tapestry that spans aeons.
My thoughts are that we are here in order to discover that invisible thread that binds our lives together, and once understood and acknowledged, to live our lives in accordance with it. But what is this “invisible thread” exactly?
And that is the million-dollar question isn’t it? And how long will you wait before you even begin to acknowledge its existence?
Perhaps that is one of the imperatives of living a fulfilled life. If everything falls away in the end, what remains after I am gone? For the artist, it is their creative works that might survive. It might be in the hearts of those we loved, as an energy of inspiration and consolation. It might be in the effects of actions we took while we were here, whether personal or political, positive or negative.
Every day on this path,
a piece of myself will fall
away.
I have already left a
long trail of dead parts
behind me.
Soon there will be almost
nothing left,
maybe a little slice of a finger,
a fragment of a heart.
Soon, even those will
be gone too.
All that may remain might
be these words, a few photos,
a blessed love that once
was here,
where you are standing now.
- from A Little Book of Hours
Knowing that everything will vanish, even this form, does this not make every moment all the more precious and poignant?
This is something we typically don’t like to think about very much. Our ordinary consciousness is bound by time, the inexorable march from birth to death.
To me the most remarkable line in this poem is the last one, “this masterpiece in which we live forever.” That line is a concise summation of mystical experience, and it cannot be grasped by the mind alone. It is an experience that only destiny can provide; all we can do is till the ground in preparation.
And about that the only real thing I can say is this: If you come by my house between two and four a.m, many nights you might see the glow of a single candle, flickering within. And that is me, a night-farmer, tilling the stony ground….
At some point your house will
collapse. Everyone knows this; it is
not a secret. It was built that way,
by design. And until that time,
it is up to us to discover the invisible
graces by which we are all together,
helping each other through
this benevolent catastrophe.
-from Are We Not all Your Kindling
-Josef Skye Tornick
Joe Landwehr’s Post
This quote by Peter J. Palmer interprets a meme that, in modern times, refers back to a poem by William Stafford called “The Thread.” Stafford, in turn, took his inspiration from William Blake, who spoke of a “golden string” that would “lead you in at Heaven’s gate.” The idea has since also resonated with wildman poet Robert Bly, mystical plant biologist Stephen Buhner, and many others inhabiting the ecotone between creativity and spirituality, myself included.
At a fundamental level, the idea that within any life, there exists a guided passage through to heaven’s gate, or Palmer’s magnificent tapestry, or whatever metaphor you prefer for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, is appealing. Even more appealing is the idea that this thread emerges not through dedication to some external source of ultimate truth, but from within the unique individual fabric of our own existence.
“…the artist, in the broad sense of that word, attempts to follow the thread consciously, while still very much alive, as the very essence of the art that they pursue.”
Palmer suggests we follow the thread “unknowing . . . until toward the end,” as everything else falls away, the thread reveals itself. In an ultimate sense, as Palmer seems to understand it, the thread is what allows us to have a conscious death, and this is certainly of great value. I would argue, however, that the artist, in the broad sense of that word, attempts to follow the thread consciously, while still very much alive, as the very essence of the art that they pursue. In the life of the spiritually oriented artist, one who attempts to discern and illuminate the inner essence of things, both of these dimensions of the thread come together.
The thread, in Palmer’s ultimate sense, is what remains when everything non-essential falls away. But this is also true of the creative life, which regardless of your creative medium of choice, is always a matter of spiritual neti neti (not this, not that), chipping away the non-essential to reveal something essential, worth bringing into the world.
This is not an easy path to walk. Often the thread shows itself when we least expect it, or disappears when we are most intent on seeing it clearly. As soon as we feel we have a solid working definition of the thread, the thread goes underground again, where it enters a mycorrhizal network that connects the forest we suddenly can’t see for the trees. The thread will inevitably emerge again, but this rhythm of appearing and disappearing seems to be the nature of this thread, as well as the essential rhythm of the creative life.
“…As soon as we feel we have a solid working definition of the thread, the thread goes underground again…”
It occurs to me now, as I write this, that as I prepare to move to Portugal to begin a new life in a new culture, I am seeking to feel my way along a golden thread resonating in both these dimensions. As I sift through all of my “stuff” - the flotsam and jetsam of my current life, as well as numerous creative projects in various stages of completion - I find myself asking, what is still relevant to who I am now, or to who I imagine myself becoming in this brave new world I am entering. Of course, I can’t entirely answer this question until I get there, but I find nonetheless that as I prune my life of everything that is no longer glowing, my golden thread is slowly becoming more accessible. I can’t quite see it yet, or describe it, but I can feel it.
Over the course of a lifetime of creative effort, it seems to me, this kind of intentional pruning is the essense of what it means to follow a golden thread. Often in times of transition, we are more willing, or maybe just compelled by necessity, to let go, and so it is often then that the thread glows more brightly. When we’re fiercely clutching onto our lives, or our creative ideas, as though our existence depends upon it, the thread goes dim.
Of course, death is the ultimate transition, but even here, we can still be clutching. The more we can practice not clutching, learning to let non-essentials go at every step of a creative life, the more easily and naturally will our golden thread lead us into the heart of the magnificent tapestry. Or at least, as I lighten my load here on this shore, I can imagine my thread stetching across the ocean to the far shore, and the creative magnifence that awaits me there, as everything inessential in the old life falls away.