One of my favourite WB Yeats poems is entitled These are the Clouds. I use this poem in exploring creativity in the workshop Companioning YOUR Greatness.

There are many questions that invite you to explore creative thinking (which is not what most people THINK it is). The question I would like to ask you that invites the journey of creative exploration beyond thinking is, “Have you made Greatness YOUR Companion?”

This question focuses you on creativity as a way of Being in the world rather than simple as an exercise you engage in doing. You begin a quest rather than simply answer a question regarding the process of creative thinking.

There is no such thing as a new idea. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope – Mark Twain

Mark Twain was right and not right at the same time. Thought is always old but Creation as it flows through you is forever NEW. The choice that you have is which of these paths will you follow?

So friend, let me ask you, “Have you, or are you making, Greatness YOUR Companion?

This poem These are the Clouds by WB Yeats is really about you. It is the invitation to the real quest that you are here to realize and celebrate.

More often than not, however, you block your creative vision and resist exploring and expressing your innate creativity.

So what stops the flow of creativity  that is intended to flow through you? The poet tells you in the first line of this poem: –

These are the clouds about the fallen sun…

The ‘fallen sun’is the magnificence of the light that you are here to shine into the world. The”clouds about the fallen sun” are your beliefs and thoughts that for the most part cloud this light.

The ‘clouds’ represent the normal everyday insanity that is your over thinking personal mind..  (Eckhart Tolle – The Power of NOW)

This results in living your life under the cloud of the personal sense of separateness were you THINK you are apart from the magnificence of the light of your own Being.

To learn how to allow your innate creativity requires a different kind of intelligence.

It is not the intelligence of the intellect but the more expensive intelligence that is spiritual. The intellect is a wonderful intelligence and it too is be be celebrated. However, the focus on this intelligence has resulted in an over dependance on its power.

There are so few people teaching the invitation that is spiritual intelligence. This is the flow of intelligence that lifts you higher and allows you to move beyond the clouds of personal thinking.  Spiritual intelligence includes:-

• Embodied Intelligence – I am.
• Emotional Intelligence – I feel.
• Mental Intelligence – I think
• Spiritual Intelligence – I AM

Spiritual intelligence is not taught in school or university. It is not taught in most religious institutions. Such religious institutions have as their primary focus the maintenance of a fixed belief or system of thought.

There is no invitation to direct experience of what it is to live a life devoid of cloud-based thinking.

What if you lived your life as someone who simply opened to the life of universal intelligence? You would receive a real universal education. You would be magnificently creative in the service of the highest good.

Clouds will still come when you become a Companion of Greatness. However, there will be a difference. You will not so easily forget that the Sun of unlimited creative potential is forever available to you.

You trust the power of inspiration (the Sun) rather than the clouds (the overthinking mind).

This is the Power of Poetry when rightly understood.

It invites you into the revelation of your astonishing light. Most people have no direct experience of this astonishing light. Most people teaching poetry have no ability to transmit the revelatory power of poetic metaphor.

This is not entirely their fault. It is because, like most everyone else, they have been taught the superiority of the intellect. Transmission of vision and KNOWING (creative intelligence) come from what W. B. Yeats calls, “The Deep Heart’s Core.” (Lake Isle of Innisfree)

To learn to trust in your innate creativity is a scary experience for most people. It requires that you are willing to enter the unknown and allow yourself to be known through. It is so much more comfortable to be told what creativity is rather than go on the quest to find your own wisdom voice.

Here is a clip from one of my all-time favourite movies featuring one of my all time favourite actors Robin Williams. This is a movie where the central character (Robin Williams) teaches what it means to be one who has the courage to Companion their Greatness.

So, friend if you are interested in fully realising the astonishing light of your own Being you need to commit to becoming one who will Companion YOUR Greatness and begin to explore a question that you can live and not just answer.

Creativity is more than simply asking questions. It is learning to be available to the Quest.

This is the quest you are invited to explore in the lines of poem These are the Clouds by W. B. Yeats. This invites you to begin to commit to and acknowledge that in whatever way you express creativity it matters.

These are the Clouds

THESE are the clouds about the fallen sun,

The majesty that shuts his burning eye;

The weak lay hand on what the strong has done,

Till that be tumbled that was lifted high

And discord follow upon unison,

And all things at one common level lie.

And therefore, friend, if your great race were run

And these things came, so much the more thereby

Have you made greatness your companion?

Although it be for children that you sigh:

These are the clouds about the fallen sun,

The majesty that shuts his burning eye.

W. B. Yeats

It matters because it allows your light to shine into the world as it is intended by Creation to do so. You become The Sweet Dancer that you are part off and never apart from as a unique expression the Lord of the Dance.

Notice if any of the above makes you doubt that you are so astonishing.

Simply recognise that this is just another cloud about the fallen Sun. If you’ve been a little encouraged or inspired then recognise that you have become one who has had a cloud opening experience. Neither is to be judged better than the other but one will allow you to feel better than the other.

Conclusion

The poem These are the Clouds is a poem about the way in which your overthinking mind blocks the light of your astonishing creative self.

W. B. Yeats invites you on a quest to make companioning your greatness part and parcel of living your wild and precious life. In the words of another poet Derek Walcott you can:-

..meet again the one who has loved you all your life and knows you by heart. – Love After Love.

I companion greatness through the daily practice of writing reflections on poetry that I love. How do you Companion YOUR Greatness or what do you find blocks the process?