The Secret That Became Me Poem by Mystic Qalandar

I once allowed myself
to believe in a secret—

not hidden somewhere beyond the stars,
but veiled
in the very fabric of existence:

a silence beneath every sound,
a formlessness
beneath every form.

And then came the ancient Be—

and what had no shape
entered the grammar of shape;

the unseen
cast a shadow called existence,
and the silence
learned the language of light.

I began to wonder—
was creation ever
an act of making,

or the first unveiling
of what had always been hidden?

Perhaps it began
with the First Glance—

the Transcendent
beholding His own Hidden Being,

and in that timeless beholding
the mirror appeared,

and the mirror
called itself the world.

---

Then came I—

another reflection,
another veil,
another word
spoken into the unspeakable.

But who was speaking?

And who was being spoken?

---

I thought I was the one
writing these words,

until something deeper
whispered:

You are not the author
you thought you were.

You are a sentence
still becoming.

A command
mistaking itself
for a commander.

---

And suddenly
my freedom stood before me
like an unanswered question.

What does it mean to choose
when I did not choose to exist?

What does it mean to will
when the breath that wills
was first given to me?

Am I free
because I can choose,

or free
only when I discover
the One through whom
choice moves?

---

Perhaps freedom
is not escaping the Command.

Perhaps it is awakening
within it.

Perhaps surrender
is not the death of the self,

but the death
of the illusion
that the self was ever alone.

---

So now
I gather myself—

thread by scattered thread—

from nights of forgetting,
from days of becoming,
from names I wore
and mistook for my own.

I gather the silence
beneath my thoughts,

the light beneath my seeing,

the breath beneath my breath,

the ancient memory
that has no story
and yet remembers.

---

And every time
a thread returns,

a veil becomes thinner.

Until one day
perhaps there will be
nothing left to unveil—

nothing left
but the Secret,

looking through these eyes,

breathing through this breath,

and discovering
that the one who spent
a lifetime searching for It

was never outside
the mystery—

was itself
one of its veils,

one of its words,

one of its ways
of becoming known.

—MyKoul