I Am Within Reality Poem by Mystic Qalandar

Smoke rose in silent spirals.
In their drifting waves,
I searched for my own namelessness.

Then a thought—
neither arriving nor departing—
surfaced on the lake of memory,
as though the water itself
had become its own center.

I hungered for those realities
never lost,
only folded into their own corners.

A path was there,
though I could not be certain
that I myself was that path.

I longed to feel nearness to the Truth—
not a promise carved in stone,
but the echo of the voice
that lived before stone became stone.

I wanted to hear the song
that Truth has sung in the veins of the universe
since the beginning—
and I, without knowing,
had been singing it in every breath.

This was my faith:
that even on unknown roads
I have loved the Truth—
in different forms, under different names,
and sometimes, with no name at all.

I named every shadow.
Traced every line.
Hoping that if I understood
the storm of the untrue,
I might pass through it
and reach that ocean of Truth
which never becomes a storm.

My ignorance, my deceptions, my illusions—
I hid them behind my own silenced voice,
afraid that if I gave them words
they would rise as a wall before me—
a wall whose other side was myself.

And perhaps
this was the most beautiful tragedy:
I reached out to protect my own essence,
but those very hands—which were within me—
became the obstacles in my path.

Then one day
their grip loosened,
like wings released from their own weight.

I woke.
And saw:
the door had always been open.

The walls still stood,
but now I understood—
I had built them myself,
stone by stone, from my own heedlessness,
and in every stone was my face.

Then I found every part of my reality
safe within me—
the parts I had believed were scattered.
The coffin of my being
shattered into pieces.

But nothing was scattered.
I had only lost my way
in the fog of my own misunderstanding,
and the path—within me—
had been searching for me.

Now I no longer search for any lost reality,
because I am within reality,
and reality is within me—
as color is within light,
and light within color.

Not color first,
nor light after—
but one single moment
that they call I.

MyKoul