In God Makes the Rivers to Flow; An Anthology of the World’s Sacred Poetry & Prose, Eknath Easwaran includes a selection from William Law entitled “The Deepest Part of Thy Soul.”  I’ve written the following poem-like reflections inspired by this selection.

Beyond the Body

 But there is a root or depth in thee
            from whence all these faculties come forth,
            as lines from a centre or as branches from
            the body of a tree.
This depth is called the Centre, the Fund
            or Bottom of the soul.
—William Law

 We call it depth because it is beyond illusion

beyond what the senses call real.

We could speak a certain kind of truth

if we said it was on the surface too.

That the soul is hidden in plain sight.

But something happens to us when

we seek the soul deep within ourselves.

Some kind of knowing that words can’t touch.

A feeling in the pit of the stomach.

A pull deep down to the center of the earth.

We find we have no bottom,

that the depths of us plummet beyond the body,

beyond the earth,

seeking the center of the universe,

which is infinity.

We could spend a million lives

exploring the depths of our soul.

We could spend a million lives

climbing to it heights.

It is our health, our wealth,

a fountain of love and blessings

that never can be exhausted.

It is beyond our believing,

beyond our knowing.

It is something we can barely touch.

There is another world within us;

there is another universe.

There are realities beyond reality

that we can’t begin to imagine.

And this deep part of us

that we touch with the breath,

that we touch by listening to our pulse,

that we touch by feeling our fingers and toes

both at once from within,

when we know the silence of our minds,

this deep part of us

leaps to kiss us on the lips

if we just give it a little attention.

This deep part of us

longs to impart its wisdom,

longs to unite with our surface mind

in the wildest of all spiritual ecstasies.