Crossing the Unknown Sea

by David Whyte

Our greatest opportunity for discovery and growth is in the thing we most often want to get away from: our work. It's where people spend the majority of their time, and it's where many spend much of it wishing they were somewhere else, doing something else. And it's where people often spend their time not being present, and not being themselves. Whyte points out that "as human beings we are the one part of creation that can refuse to be itself. Our bodies can be present in our work, but our hearts, minds and imaginations can be placed firmly in neutral or engaged elsewhere". Being engaged elsewhere is damaging to our souls. "Crossing the Unknown Sea" is about reawakening the sleeping captain in us before that soul crashes on the rocks. The book takes us on the holiest of pilgrimages - to the centre of identity and the roots of growth.

David Whyte was born and grew up in Yorkshire. He is a poet and a renowned international consultant, and conducts workshops for companies. He is one of the few poets to take his perspective on creativity into the corporate arena, helping clients to understand individual and organisational creativity. As well as 4 volumes of poetry he is the author of THE HEART AROUSED: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America. He lives with his family in the Pacific Northwest of America.

Part 1 Beginnings: courage and conservation - setting out with a firm persuasion; the mountain farm - a stranger at the door. Part 2 Mid ocean: at the cliff edge of life - from powerlessness to participation; a star for navigation - ambition, horizon and arrival; out of Ireland - a short sea crossing. Part 3 Arrivals: the awkward way the swan walks - from exhaustion to wholeheartedness; the fatal shore - arrival and authenticity. Part 4 Pespectives: outlaw imaginings - when the real you wants out; a marriage with silence - escaping the prison of time and work; crossing the unknown sea - a voyage through the hours of the day. Part 5 Pilgrimage: Keats and conversation - the new and newly youthful world of work.