Getting Unstuck

THREE

Opening Up and Letting Go

THE SENSITIVE YOUNG POET Rainer Maria Rilke lived much of his life “in his head,” concerned with literature and philosophy. Wandering one day in the Louvre, he found himself captivated by a fifth century BC statue of Apollo. Only the torso remained, the head having been lost centuries earlier. Rilke realized that this god communicated his presence and energy, his “light,” fully and directly with his body. No head was even necessary.

Standing in front of the statue, Rilke found himself becoming aware of a dimension of life he had been missing without even knowing it. “We cannot know his legendary head / with eyes like ripening fruit,” Rilke wrote in the poem “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” “And yet his torso is still ...