The Sovereign Of Shadows Poem by Mystic Qalandar

Wisdom is not the art
of uprooting the ego whole—
for even that renunciation
can be another mask,
a saintly garment stitched by self.

Wisdom begins when we notice
how the ego tirelessly crowns itself
with shadow-ornaments.
It thirsts for praise.
It wants to be proved right.
It gathers slights like offerings
from roadside ghosts,
and stages the everyday
as a single-player drama.

Step back.
Attend these risings.
From a gentle distance,
they are almost tenderly absurd—
an actor rapt in his own blaze,
a wave convinced it commands the sea,
a candle flame that claims the sun.

The ego moves as if the cosmos
had signed its name upon every hour.
But the real is vaster—ancient, intricate, indifferent,
older than memory, wider than the small, fierce plots
of any single heart.

To call the ego venom is not to strike it down,
nor to exile the pulse that breathes in you.
It is simply to withdraw the crown,
to smile when it demands the lens,
to name its fears, applaud its performances,
and refuse the throne of every tale.

The awakened still carry an ego.
They have not banished it, nor taught it silence,
nor floated beyond its pull.
They are merely less enchanted.
They see its disguises—the pious mask, the wounded king,
the soft voice that claims enlightenment.
They hear its inflation, watch its dramas
as one watches rain on a distant pane:
close enough to feel, far enough to know.

True wisdom is not absence of self.
It is the luminous clarity that sees through illusions—
holding the absurd and the tender together,
and no longer mistaking the actor for the sun.

— MyKoul