A poem can be drawn from various realms of experience.

Let's consider soul to be the creator in any artistic or life situation. If soul is allowed to work freely, its creations express life, love, freedom, and beauty. They seem to have the musical characteristics of melodic continuity, harmonious agreement and pleasingness, and rhythmic consistency.

If the creative flow is drawn from the mental plane, it might tend to be highly structured and precisely rhythmic. As such, it might restrict the free play of the creative heart.

Emotional artistry has a tendency to be creation for the sake of creation -- cathartic, intense, scatter-shooting just to release the charge.

Physical creativity arises from a reaction to material needs as they exist in a world of reasonably inert substance. A caveman would carve a club to fit his hand; this is physical creativity -- a response to a material necessity (defense). If he makes red chalk marks on it -- because that color reminds him of thrilling battles (and bloody victims) -- he has found an emotional reason to create. Calculation of a more-efficient club will result in a manifestation from a mental process. Perhaps the true creator (soul) sees the club as a tool to aid the person to survive as an expression of life; and soul would create for that reason.

Every artistic creation (including poetry) is an attempt to express that spiritual thrust of life, love, beauty, and freedom. But sometimes we draw on the energies of the lower parts of consciousness, and we confuse the image there for the pure image that really wants to be expressed. For example, if we dwell on a lower image of freedom, we might write a poem about political independence, with words of logic (which can be misleading), specifics (which can be limiting), and emotions (which can be blinding). In soul, freedom is an easy reality which is known purely and completely.

To experience a poem most thoroughly is to experience it as an expression of life, love, and beauty.

1. As a manifestation of life, it needs no justification for its existence; it just is, and it arises freely as a natural expression of a living soul.
2. As an expression of love, it desires to share its own experience of richness, and to show a clear and truthful appreciation of the poem's theme.
3. As an expression of beauty, it accepts the beingness of its theme, and shows that everything is light when seen in its own light.

Language can express life, love, and beauty, to the extent that the poem is allowed to grow naturally from the inner worlds, where we explore and bring back whatever we want.

The poem has its own needs. We provide an open door for the poem to the extent that we indulge spontaneity, and freedom of expression, and sensitivity to the specific needs of the poem, and an openness to step away from the limited frameworks of our personality.

The writing of poetry is a natural process, like the flight of a hailstone through the atmosphere, picking up layers of form as it falls to earth. The poem exists in its pure state, far from here. And it takes physical form through us, picking up our thoughts and feelings as it comes into physical being.

Words and feelings are symbols of the poem's reality. When this reality is honored, it takes on the dress that most clearly expresses the poem's nature. The symbolism occurs automatically, with no thought for audience -- just a clear vision of beingness. Like poetry, prescription glasses are a tool of sight, and their purpose is not really in the glasses themselves, but in their ability to help the user to see beyond them.

When we are reading a poem, or loving a person, we are experiencing the physical form and also experiencing the life which is expressed from inside. Only if we look beyond the form can the form be fully experienced and loved. Truly loving is to see the living soul which is beyond the form.