Seeds of Awareness
Finding Our Way Through Poetry and Change
Poetry as the Experience Itself
The video is from a long ago interview with David Whyte, a poet, philosopher, and speaker. He reminds us that poetry is not just a reflection of life but life itself unfolding in real time. It is not an analysis, not a theory, not an explanation—it is the experience. This distinction is crucial in a world that often prioritizes data, logic, and efficiency over deeper understanding. In a business setting, decisions are often made by examining reports, running projections, and chasing quantifiable results. But something essential gets lost when we reduce human experience to metrics alone. We sense this gap when leaders and employees alike begin asking: What happened to the spark? Where did the meaning go?
Whyte suggests that this longing isn’t just about work; it is about how we move through life itself. In personal relationships, we might approach challenges by trying to solve them like equations—more communication, better time management, clearer goals—without realizing that the depth we seek cannot be strategized into existence. Similarly, in business, creativity and innovation do not emerge from endless meetings about how to be creative. They arise when people allow themselves to be immersed in something real, when they stop talking about engagement and start experiencing engagement.
This is where poetry offers a crucial shift. Unlike a mission statement or a quarterly review, poetry does not aim to summarize or categorize—it creates space for revelation. It moves us beyond the constant parsing of what should be done and into an active engagement with what is. When Whyte speaks to executives, scientists, and professionals, he sees how the pressure of productivity often pulls them away from this engagement. They search for answers in efficiency models when what they truly need is an encounter with something more alive, something that allows them to recognize their own depth in real time. Poetry—whether written or simply experienced in the fullness of the present moment—reminds us that the most profound insights do not come from dissecting life but from standing within it, fully present and awake.
Embracing Creative Change
At some point, whether in business or life, we find ourselves in unfamiliar territory. The structures we once relied on—our expertise, our routines, our sense of identity—no longer hold firm. This moment of disorientation can feel like failure, but Whyte reframes it as the clearest sign that we are on the threshold of something new.
Organizations experience this when long-standing strategies begin to falter, when market shifts demand reinvention, or when an internal culture no longer supports the creativity it once promised. On a personal level, we encounter it when a career loses its sense of purpose, when relationships demand a level of honesty we hadn’t anticipated, or when the version of ourselves we’ve carefully built no longer feels authentic. In these moments, the impulse is to scramble for quick solutions, to grasp at familiar signposts. Yet Whyte suggests that real transformation requires a willingness to be lost—to step forward without a clear roadmap and trust that meaning emerges from the unknown.
This is not a comfortable process. It demands that we release the illusion of control and step into a space where uncertainty and self-doubt exist alongside possibility. Yet history, art, and even the natural world remind us that this is the inevitable rhythm of renewal. Forests regenerate after fire, ideas evolve through disruption, and growth is often marked by the unsettling feeling of not knowing what comes next. It is in this space—where old assumptions fall away—that creativity flourishes.
If we think of change as something to be managed and optimized, we miss its deeper invitation. The companies, leaders, and individuals who navigate transformation well are not the ones who cling to certainty but those who learn to inhabit uncertainty with a sense of curiosity and presence. When we stop treating transition as a problem to be solved and instead step fully into the experience, we begin to understand that the path forward does not need to be visible from the start. It reveals itself only when we are brave enough to walk it.
Letting Ourselves be Found
Whyte recounts the teaching story told in David Wagoner’s poem “Lost,” where the elder advises, “Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost. Wherever you are is called here…” and goes on to say, “The forest knows where you are. You must let it find you” . This directive to stand still can feel contrary to our modern reflex for constant motion. We are conditioned to believe that perpetual activity—answering every email, finishing every task, rushing to each next step—will somehow lead us toward clarity. Yet paradoxically, it often only deepens our confusion.
In business, this can translate into frenetic schedules, where strategy after strategy is proposed without ever creating the space to actually listen to what we really need. In our personal lives, it can mean drifting from one distraction to the next, forgetting to take a breath and reflect on who we truly are beneath the noise. But by honoring silence, paying attention to our deepest stirrings, and waiting in that stillness, we begin to see how life itself gently orients us—if only we have the presence of mind to let it happen.
To stand still means to allow the forest—our environment, our relationships, our own psyche—to reveal its pathways. We cannot seize that revelation by force. It arrives the moment we stop fighting the unknown and start welcoming it, a practice that poetry can nurture in us. Whether you find yourself lost in the corporate maze or navigating emotional frontiers, let this “forest” around you speak. In that moment, you will sense a kind of quiet joy in the clarity that emerges, realizing that the most profound answers often come when we finally consent to be found.
Poetry, in Whyte’s view, does not merely describe those moments of chaos and renewal; it is those moments. It forms, in real time, the bridge connecting our scattered selves to the sources of wisdom that lie beyond rational explanation. By drawing on timeless works—Dante’s journey through the dark wood, the David Wagoner’s teaching from “Lost,” or a carefully chosen poem shared in a corporate seminar—Whyte shows us how to navigate the unknown. We do not have to be skilled poets to benefit from their words; we only need to be willing to stand still, let the forest find us, and allow the experience of poetry to illuminate our way forward.
