The Self That Is No Stranger Poem by Mystic Qalandar

A rustling at dawn—
the breeze threshes my soul
with the fragrance of unseen roses,
petals brushed with dew,
a camphor-cool touch,
the balm of embers gone still.

And songs upon songs
stride through the morning,
and I rise with the rising sun,
exultant—
not I, but the sun I am,
sweeping its own arc
above the singing mountain stream.

There, birds awaken in the blue,
chirring, trilling—
yet all I hear
is the one echo,
the hollow resonance of divine voices
ringing:

Welcome, O stranger to thyself.

And suddenly,
the stranger disappears.

The sun, the stream,
the birds, the breath—
no longer many,
but one vast Reality
expressing itself
through a thousand tongues.

I see it now—
the unseen thread
passing through all things,
from star to stone,
from wing to leaf,
from the pulse within me
to the pulse of the universe—
nothing stands apart.

What I had called I
was only a knot
in the seamless fabric of Being.

And what I had sought
beyond myself
was here—
within and without,
before and beyond every name:

the One
recognising itself
in everything.

I am no longer
a stranger to myself.

For the Self I sought
was never mine—
it was the One
looking through every eye,
breathing through every breath,
the hidden thread
through all that is.

—MyKoul