Today we’d like to introduce you to Chelan Harkin

Chelan , we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?

At age 21, in a time of acute crisis, I had what I would call a profound and transformational spiritual intervention. I was at a time in my life when I was desperate for authentic connection with myself and equally desperate for a way to express that authenticity to the world. I was on a pilgrimage that I hoped would foster some kind of spiritual opening. I visited the prison cell of a long-dead spiritual teacher and inspirational figure who had significantly influenced my life and perspective. While alone in the cell, I was overcome with a message that filled my being. It was as though I became an amplifier, each cell reverberating with the message, “Let Us Dance.” In true poetic form, this concise message communicated to me profound meaning. What was delivered to my inmost being with inarguable authority was that I needed to let go of perfectionism and enter a dynamic, honest, wholehearted dance with myself, with the divine, with my entire life. More than a conceptual message, this was an unlocking force. Along with it came a profoundly healing catharsis followed by an unmatched ecstasy. I started to sing in this prison cell, my song echoing off the prison walls. This profound experience alone in a prison cell is where my freedom journey began. My creative capacity and destiny was unveiled to me in that moment and that experience showed me with authoritative absolutism that I would one day write a book of poetry titled, “Let Us Dance, The Stumble and Whirl with The Beloved” which I now have. This experience unlocked and introduced me to the muse and showed me the way to let it flow was through allowing Life energy to flow through my being, uninhibited. It has not corked back up since.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?

Certainly not! When poetry broke through me at age 21 and started to flow in an inspired way that required almost no editing, I trusted and valued this poetic process more than anything but felt almost deathly insecure about sharing my work with other people. While I completely trusted and adored whatever this force was that was flowing through me, I had major and complex relational wounds and I feared that if this poetic part of me were rejected or not understood by others, that that would create a chasm between my inmost being and others that I could not bear. That said, it took me 12 years to gain the confidence to publish my first book. It was when I finally decided to put my poetry into the world was when I really committed to confronting the mountain of limiting assumptions I had about myself. Though this publishing journey has been magical and filled with extraordinary doors opening, it has also been a walk directly through the fire and in this I have become both phoenix and ash. This path has been one of surrender, not of pushing to overcome difficulties, deep fears, insecurities or obstacles, but feeling through them until their bound, ungenerative energy stuck in my being became liberated fuel that has fed my growth and creativity.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?

I’m an author of mystical poetry. I write in a style that is often compared to Rumi, Hafiz or Kahlil Gibran. I am truly proud of and delighted by my poetry and my poetic process. It is a deeply embodied process of bringing my consciousness into whatever resistance I’m holding in my being. I’ve learned that when I feel instead of flee my feelings, once trapped energy becomes freed. When it flows, it delivers to me inspiration, wisdom, insight and profound guidance that speaks through me as poetry. My poetry carries a tone of inspired, loving authority that offers transformational perspectives and profound permission for the reader to embrace their whole self.

What’s next?

Thanks for asking! I have a book that is complete and available for pre-order titled, The Prophetess, The Return of The Prophet from The Voice of The Divine Feminine. It is an homage and contemporary continuation of Kahlil Gibran’s globally beloved classic, The Prophet. The Prophetess talks about the human condition and human potential. Using poetic prose it offers a rich, potent and compelling invitation to redefine and reconsider the ways we relate to the themes in our life that matter most. This book is being published by Penguin Random House. It is a deep honor that this book has come through me and I am thrilled for it to go far and wide.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.chelanharkin.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chani.harkin