In God Makes the Rivers to Flow; An Anthology of the World’s Sacred Poetry & Prose, Eknath Easwaran includes a selection from Swami Paramananda entitled “Origin of All.” I’ve written the following poem-like reflections inspired by this selection.
Sweet Deity
O Supreme Deity, Mother of the moving
and unmoving, come, manifest Thyself to us.
—Swami Paramananda
Sweet deity, whose body is the earth,
whose body is the sun,
whose body is the light,
whose body is void,
whose body is my body,
I call upon you to make yourself known,
you who can only be known
in the depths of our being,
who can only be known by the part of us
you represent,
who can only be known by the knower
who is our truest self.
What do I believe about you?
That what I believe doesn’t matter,
that what I believe can be known,
but all I know is what I believe,
not what is,
the truth of your being,
if you can be said to be
rather than not be,
to have a presence in the absence
of a face,
to be more than just
the ground, the foundation
of all that is.
I don’t even know what I’m saying
when I try to come close to you,
close to conceiving you,
the womb that conceived me
and all of creation.
Being that can be anything
and nothing at the same time.
Being that manifests
according to our desires,
what we make known to you,
with the patterns in our consciousness,
the patterns that define our reality,
that malleable substance
that only appears to be.
I am alone in the world
connected to the one presence
that is you to me
and me to you
that is the ocean of which
I am only a drop
or wave.
I am not a thing.
I am made in your image, a being.
We are here simply to be,
at least that is what I want to believe,
when maybe I should leave all being
to you.
And so I long to connect
to you with whom I have never
been separated.
I long to know you
whom I have always known
and only know
if I know anything at all.
Sweet deity, what are you?
Sweet deity, how do
I come to you, how do
you come to me?
Sweet deity, soothe my ache,
this ache for the time
and place in which
I knew no illusions
in which I knew our oneness
with no veil between
me and my knowledge.
There is no time or place.
All is one time and place.
And so I ask you to
as Christ of my being
rend the curtain
that keeps me from knowing
the only true reality.
Sweet deity, sweet being.
