We begin simply hearing of it, and disbelieving.
How could something so Wonderful be true,
When all we've ever known…
This body, this world,
And ever-changing conditionality…
Point to its impossibility?
Notions of Liberation from the suffering of “I”,
And even more so the advent
Of Unalloyed Ecstasy…
Are thought, by the Mind,
To be delusions.
But deep within,
In The Realm of The Heart,
We cannot escape the strange Longing
That will not be extinguished,
For that… which cannot be put into words.
At some point, if we are Blessed…
We turn to seek Ourself,
Feeling our way back… back…
Behind all that appears to us…
Struggling to locate our Source.
What am I?
Where am I?
Where?
Where?
Where is the seer,
The perceiver,
The knower,
The experiencer?
At some point, if we are Blessed…
The Fragrance of Heaven
Wafts across our path,
Here… in the realm of Experience.
And is recognized,
In the very instant of its appearing,
Though never before known to us,
As our Heart's Desire.
This is the Fragrance…
Of our own Pure Being,
And a sign that we have traveled, at last,
From the far frontiers…
Into the borderlands of Heaven.
Now our course is moved, at every turn,
In pursuit of this fleeting Fragrance,
Back, back, behind all that appears to us,
And we are guided, in the truest sense…
By our Sat Guru.
We “remember” the Feeling of It,
Not with our mind,
But with our Whole Being.
We Feel our way to Heaven,
Back… back…
Behind all that appears to us.
At some point, if we are Blessed…
The Fragrance begins to arise
Not only in conscious moments of inward turning,
But spontaneously, and we are taken unawares.
Having begun in soliciting, we are solicited.
At some point, if we are Blessed…
All that appears to us becomes apparitional,
And we… as well,
And we see… far off…
The City on The Hill,
Wherein lays the Temple.
At some point, if we are Blessed…
The Fragrance of the Temple's Incense, Ananda,
Surrounds us always, breathed in, and out,
Inherent in, and inseparable from,
The turning inward of Attention.
At some point, if we are Blessed…
The Fragrance of Ananda
Takes up residence, paradoxically, in our Heart;
Here… in this Locus of Experience
That is our Manifest Being.
Now, so close to Formless dissolution…
An impossible mystical alchemy
That transcends the laws of duality,
Brings about the Experience,
Of Formlessness in Form.
Only the smallest distance remaining…
Only a thought,
Between “I” and Utter Dissolution,
The continued inward turning,
And ever-increasing Ecstasy,
Brings us to the door of the Holy of Holies.
And then…
if we are Blessed…
Poof!
