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 “Source of Our Existence.” I’ve written the following poem-like reflections inspired by this selection.
The Breath
Unfold our understanding that we may comprehend Thy vastness.
Reveal unto us Thy Divine Grace that we may be
sustained by the knowledge of Thy Presence within us.
Fill our hearts with Thy holy inspiration that we may follow
Thy path with unwavering faith and undaunted courage.
Consecrate and sanctify our life.
—Swami Paramananda
God, Goddess, All-That-Is is all one song, the universe, sacred word.
The vastness is an illusion.
Everything exists in spacelessness.
Everything happens in timelessness.
Infinite space in no space.
Eternal time in no time.
That’s what makes the Divine so impossible to comprehend.
For the illusions of space and time are as real to us as the illusions of matter and energy.
We smell a rose and then we smell baking bread, and so we sense the passage of time.
We hear a word and it is followed by another word, and so we sense the passage of time.
We see a car pass from one place to another, and so we sense distance.
We feel our hands move from our lap to our keyboard, and so we sense space exists.
Our bodies exist in space and time.
So how can we comprehend God in the spaceless space, the timeless time.
When I was a child, I was taught that God exists outside space and time.
I can’t comprehend that either.
How can God be omnipresent and dwell outside of space and time?
How can God dwell within my heart and dwell outside of the space and time my heart exists within?
I pray that God may “unfold my understanding.”
I know that God dwells within me because I can find God by going within.
But what I find and call God I can’t describe.
It is all thoughts—the thought of love, the thought of peace, the thought of joy, the thought of presence.
It is all feelings—the sense of silence within, the sense of being one with all that surrounds me, the sense that everything exists within me when I close my eyes, that sense of openness within me, that sense of being so huge and so small.
I know that God speaks words of inspiration into my heart and mind, because sometimes there is this internal voice that says, “I love you.”
I know God guides me because I am alive despite the times I could have died.
I think sometimes that only God can make life holy, but I don’t know what I mean.
Without a sense of God in everything, there is no holiness.
Without feeling God’s presence in my life, I live unsanctified.
I consecrate myself when I pray.
What I long for is to know the beauty of God in my life.
What I long for is to comprehend that beauty.
What I find when I open my mind is that the beauty of God is impossible to comprehend—it can only be felt.
What is it I feel?
So large and expansive.
Like a deep breath.
