In God Makes the Rivers to Flow; An Anthology of the World’s Sacred Poetry & Prose, Eknath Easwaran has included a selection from the Tao te Ching and entitled it “Holding to the Constant.”  I have written the following poem-like reflection inspired by this selection.  This is the second of three.

Seeing with the Soul

All things rise and flourish
Then go back to their roots.
Seeing this return brings true rest,
Where you discover who you really are.
Knowing who you are, you will find the constant.
Those who lack harmony with the constant court danger,
But those who have it gain new vision.
—Lao Tzu

When we look at things and see they are not flourishing, we are looking with the world’s limiting eyes.  We are looking through ideas from history, defining things as they have been defined.

A being has a soul, and the world says that being is flawed.  The soul says, we live, we die, we return to the source, we return to life.

The candle may melt, but there will always be flame.

When we know that we are one flame born from an everlasting fire, we know that we never completely go out.

We can be at peace.

When we know that we are an expression of the Source, we know the part of us who never dies, our True Self.

We know what always exists, what exists in the Eternal Now.

The constant is oneness, oneness with the Divine, oneness with All That Is.

The constant is insurance and assurance that all is well.

Without alignment with the constant, the Source, we are caught up in the dramas of the small self, the Ego.

We are caught up in discord and dis-ease.

But we do not have to be.  We can choose to walk through the door to higher consciousness and meet our True Self on the other side.

We can choose to return to our roots.

We can choose to see with the eyes of the soul, our Higher Self, and watch as those eyes lift all that they behold in a vision of perfection.