Impossibly

When I called out to Her,
She did not come to me,
And I cried,
“How can you be so cruel?!”

Driven by despair,
I sought to stop my Heart from beating,
And found it did not listen,
Nor would my breath.

I had nothing to do, it seemed,
With the functioning of this body,
My “participation” not required.
This body lived, and I…

I was.

It hurt so deeply, alive as “me”,
An Ancient Pain, full of “what I was”,
Qualifications and judgments,
The Great Suffering of “I”.

There was a time, I thought,
When I existed before these things,
Qualifications, judgments, by others… and myself,
Had been heaped upon me.

And so I dove Within,
Back… behind… before, ever deeper,
Seeking the experience of Pure Being,
Before I knew anything of “myself”.

No longer naming the many sounds heard,
I heard one nameless sound.
No longer naming the many things seen,
I saw one nameless vision.

I realized… there was no moment,
When I paused to consider what next to think,
And found, with a shock,
That that river flowed on… without me.

What, then, was I?

No longer the thinker,
What use in thoughtful consideration?
And so Attention moved from thought…
To Feeling.

To Feeling.

“I cannot know ‘what’ I am,” I thought,
“Until I first find myself.
Until the…
I have only an idea.”

What am I?
Where am I?
Where?
Where?

Attention, moving in Feeling,
Went in search Within,
For the location of “I”,
And found… Nothing, Anywhere.

And yet… I was.

No “thing” was found,
No little man inside, locatable,
Perceiving, experiencing,
Living.

And yet… I was.

Resting there,
Unlocatable but Alive,
Suddenly it struck me,
And the gasping mind uttered…

“I… just… Am!”

And in that timeless instant… Poof!

Everything vanished.
I vanished.
Space and time vanished.
The world vanished.

No perceiver, only Perceiving,
But… nothing perceived!
No experiencer, only Experiencing,
But… only Experiencing experienced.

Not even “Consciousness”, aware only of itself.

No God,
No Brahman,
No Emptiness,
No Self…

All words and concepts… Vanished.

Impossibly, in that Vanishing of Everything,
Unalloyed Ecstasy remained, the enjoyer… Vanished.
The Kingdom of Heaven within.
Not a place, but… Formless, Unmanifest…

Aliveness.

A Rapture so Ineffable,
The Heart's Desire Fulfilled.
In the timeless, spaceless, objectless,
And most importantly, subjectless Ecstasy…

Of Pure Being.

And when the world and I reappeared,
That same Ecstasy Shone in my Heart.
Diminished by its arising in form,
But its source… unmistakable.

Some say Bliss comes and goes,
And is not to be confused with the Absolute.
This is not my experience,
For the Ananda of Satchitananda…

Is effortlessly ever-present,
And inherent in the Dissolution of Manifestation,
A Dissolution and Bliss that impossibly…
Shines here… in the Dream of manifestation.

And I wonder, though I can never know…
Is this the Beloved of the Sufis?
Is this the Kingdom of Heaven?
Is this what Ramana spoke of?

Within… in the Radiant Locus of The Heart,
Where formlessness and form exist… at once,
Impossibly, Impossibly.
Impossibly…

But So.