Poem: Here I am

HERE I AM

What I am is so fleeting and intangible.
What I was is fixed and final. 
What I will be in the future
I don't know.

I am more closely identified
with the past than
with what actually is.

I am so much more than what
I can represent to myself
in words, or in other signs.

Communication rests upon
all kinds of agreements on
valuation of actions and things.
It is a system of abstractions.

Abstractions and signs
are like a cup.
They reduce experience
to units simple enough
to comprehend one at a time.

Trying to understand Life
in terms of words and concepts
is like trying to drink water
with a fork instead of a cup.

I need to experience
Life directly,
instead of through
abstract thought.

For some reason
I do not trust and
do not fully use
my felt sense and
direct knowing.

I need liberation from
the bounds of conventional
thought and conduct.

I forced my original spontaneity
into rigid rules of convention.
It involved conflict and pain, 
and the loss of my quiet joy.

To be free from convention
is to not be deceived by it.
It is to use it as an instrument
instead of being used by it.

Life must never be confused
with the abstract.

Note:
The felt sense is a physically sensed knowing.
The body knows the whole of each of situation,
vastly more aspects of it than you can think.
See Eugene Gendlin, Focusing, pp.vii-viii.