The Seer

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(inspired by Hughes Mearns’ famous verse)

As I was walking up the stair
I met a non-dualist who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today—
I wish, I wish he’d go away.

He looked at me with eyes so clear,
And said, “I cannot disappear,
For I am THAT, the ALL IN ALL–
The stairs, the janitor, the wall…

I am the ocean and the drop,
I am the cleaner and the mop,
I am the bell-boy and the bell,
I am pussy and the well…

I am the toaster and the toast,
And though I do not like to boast—
I am the saucer and the Source
Of ALL THAT IS – right NOW, of course…

I hope I’ve made it very clear,
That you’re the one who isn’t here.
So when we meet along the way,
Don’t even try to say G’day!”

by Ann Faraday

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When I walked into the coffee shop,
I saw God sitting at a small table
Sipping espresso and reading a newspaper.
She was about seventy years old.

I couldn’t believe it.
No one else seemed to realize that God was in the room,
Closer than four tables away,
Closer than life itself.

I took a deep breath,
And watched God take another sip of coffee.
I wanted to stand up and shout in a loud voice,
“Listen, people; this is a very special coffee shop!
This is where God chooses to drink coffee
And read the newspaper.
This place is sacred.”
But I remained silent.
No need to scare everybody.

Then, I looked at the sunlight coming through the front window,
And the way it lit up dust motes in the air—
Millions and millions of individual particles
Dancing.

From behind the counter came the tinkling sounds
Of silverware being dumped into a sink.
Small groups of people talked quietly at their tables,
And a cash register rang up a sale.

I suspected that this was the only morning in the history of all time
That it was going to happen just like this.
I thought to myself,
“It’s a lucky thing I came here this morning.”

After a while, I got up my courage and walked over to God’s table.
I said, “Hi, what’s your name?”
God said, “Jane Smith.”
I said, “Really?”
She said, “No, not really.”
We both smiled,
And then I walked out of the coffee shop and into the street.

Some people go to church to find God,
And you can find her there if you know how to look.
But you can also find her at the coffee shop.

by Bob Harwood

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I breathe the breath of the morning, I am one with the one World-Soul.
I live my own life no longer, but the life of the living Whole.
I am more than self: I am selfless: I am more than self: I am I,
I have found the springs of my being in the flush of the eastern sky,
I — the true self, the spirit, the self that is born of death –
I have found the flame of my being in the morn’s ambrosial breath.

I lose my life for a season: I lose it beyond recall
But I find it renewed, rekindled, in the life of the One, the All.
I look not forward or backward: the abysses of time are nought.
From pole to pole of the Heavens I pass in a flash of thought.
I clasp the world to my bosom: I feel its pulse in my breast, –
The pulse of measureless motion, the pulse of fathomless rest.

Is it motion or rest that thrills me? Is it lightning or moonlit peace?
Am I freer than waves of ether or prisoned beyond release?
I know not; but through my spirit, within me, around, above,
The world-wide river is streaming, the river of life and love.
Silent, serene, eternal, passionless, perfect, pure ; –
I may not measure its windings, but I know that its aim is sure.

In its purity seethes all passion in its silence resounds all song:
Its strength is builded of weakness: its right is woven of wrong.
I am borne afar on its bosom ; yet its source and its goal are mine.
From the sacred springs of creation to the ocean of love Divine.
I have ceased to think or to reason: there is nothing to ponder or prove:
I hope, I believe no longer: I am lost in a dream of love.”

by Edmond Holmes

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Pure, as the mountain stream after a fall of April snow
Conscious as he who wakens from deepest sleep, aglow
Aware as the cat who senses all before she prepares to go
Blissful as a babe in arms fondled like an endearing doe
Alone, I AM

Self-existent
Here in the Heart from where I AM is found
Now, in the Heart from where I AM is ground.
I am space for this beautiful place to happen in, and
My Earth is a grain of sand on Being’s strand
Whatever’s on the screen, whatever wave the spectral band,
Goodly Air, stormy Sea or merely mediocre Land
All is in me, this I truly recognise and understand.

I am not a tortured victim in a tormented world
A twin-holed meat ball, hairily curled,
I am no thing, no name, no body, no word,
I am single-eyed and feeling very headless
There’s no thing on theses shoulders, mind’s no longer restless
Where I’m seeing from is a boundless window, frameless.

By Alan Jacobs

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This is love: to fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First, to let go of life.
In the end, to take a step without feet;
to regard this world as invisible,
and to disregard what appears to be the self.

Heart, I said, what a gift it has been
to enter this circle of lovers,
to see beyond seeing itself,
to reach and feel within the breast.

by the Sufi poet and mystic Jelaluddin Rumi

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The lamps are different, but the Light is the same.
So many garish lamps in the dying brain’s lamp-shop,
Forget about them.
Concentrate on essence, concentrate on Light.
In lucid bliss, calmly smoking off its own holy fire,
The Light streams towards you from all things,
All people, all possible permutation of good, evil, thought, passion.
The lamps are different,
But the Light is the same.
One matter, one energy, one Light, one Light-mind,
Endlessly emanating all things
One turning and burning diamond,
One, one, one.
Ground yourself, strip yourself down,
To blind loving silence.
Stay there, until you see
You are gazing at the Light
With its own ageless eyes.

By Rumi, from: The Rumi Collection by Andrew Harvey

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Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

Emily Dickinson (Poem 1129)

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The sky has never won a prize.
The clouds have no careers.
The rainbow doesn’t say ‘my work’,
thank goodness.

The rock in the creek’s not so productive.
The mud on the bank’s not too pragmatic.
There’s nothing useful in the noise
the wind makes in the leaves.

Buck up now, my fellow superfluity,
and let’s both be of that worthless ilk,
self-indulgent as shooting stars,
self-absorbed as sunsets.

Who cares if we’re inconsequential?
At least we can revel, two good-for-nothings,
in our irrelevance; at least come and make
no difference with me.

Stephen Cushman

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Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make sense any more.

by Jelaluddin Rumi, in Coleman Barks, The Essential Rumi p. 36.

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Water symbolizes the Tao in many ways. Here, in the Tao Te Ching Lao Tzu refers to its nourishing qualities. As we know only too well in Australia, all life depends on water. It has supreme power over all living things, yet it makes no claim