Beyond The Transparent Mirror Poem by Mystic Qalandar

Every breath is a jagged stone
and you, on this infinite road,
are the mirror-maker of the soul —
for with each moment, the hidden mystery
of epiphany unveils itself to you:
you are the light itself,
and also the place where it shines.

Do not pause, do not tire,
do not say: Enough, the goal is near —
this is the ego's ruse, the trial of annihilation.
Here, at every step, a new universe
peers into the mirror of your being.
Yet you — move beyond borrowed metaphors,
to the other side of silence, where
even 'Be' has dissolved.

Every moment, the idol-temple within you
fills with the dust of forgetting —
to leave your self behind,
to forget your self entirely —
that indeed is a kind of intoxication, but
not the stupor of heedlessness.
Rather, it is that poverty (faqr) in which
the flame of 'Hu'—the divine light—
burns without the fuel of letters.

You, on the sharp edge of the blade,
keep scraping away those tiny etchings —
this is the alchemy: turning clay into light.
This is the station where
stones melt and become mirrors,
and you are both the ship and the lantern.
Yet, in every instant,
within this very body of clay,
keep carving radiance.

Do not sleep through autumn,
do not bow to the metaphor of winter —
that flame you have been given
is the divine flame: give it air,
so that whenever it awakens,
it keeps awakening,
and whenever it bends, it does not break.
For this path
demands strong hands,
and fingers that, bleeding,
keep sewing golden threads —
these threads themselves are the ropes
by which the warp and weft
of the Throne and Footstool are bound.

And at the final hour,
when your eyelids are closing
and the chain of breath is ceasing —
even then,
in the last dip of the last moment,
touch yourself —
for the carved soul is none other
than that which, even in dying,
is the act of carving.
This is annihilation,
and this is the mirage of permanence
that becomes reality
and descends into your chest —
like the dot of the letter Alif, where
all letters vanish
and contract into a single stillness.

Therefore,
rise —
for the final breath is still here,
there is still something more to scrape,
still more to carve,
you have not yet crossed
that wall of your existence
beyond which
there is no mirror, no image, no carver —
only a shadowless light tearing its own veil.

And then this is no idle claim —
the false taste of relief —
the essence of faqr is this:
that in every moment,
before you reach your original identity,
you must first turn the stone
of your own self
into a transparent mirror —
meaning:
such a transparent mirror
that on its other side
no form is reflected.
Now gaze without form
at your own formlessness —
when you yourself have become formless,
only because
in the prostration of
'You alone we worship' (Iyyaka na'budu) ,
both the one who prostrates
and the one who is prostrated
have vanished —
and only a silence remains,
calling out:
You are the very One —
the same who always was
and always will be —
beyond the transparent mirror.

—MyKoul