The I of the Beholder

Love is and naught else, for God is Love.

The I which loves and desires to express

is divine indeed, however human.

If after passing from this individuated form

I long for Union there will be none so long as I am.

Should I meet Jesus' embrace how shall I and Christ be?

Should I merge into ha-Shem how shall That be echad if I am?

Paradise is grand, Heaven is indescribable, Union alone is Union – no I.

Rumi is not cavorting with any 72 virgins, he is gone, there is only One.

I, being in love, always want to behold the beloved,

and when this being-in-love ripens to perfection, being-in will fall

of its own as leaves nourishing the earth, and becoming love itself

the beholder will be no more and this I is naught but love itself.

The practice of humility is there to find a path toward effacement.

In its effacement in the Beloved does the I of the beholder attain its purpose,

and all the religion and all the sadhana and all the yoga and all the bhajan

are only there for this I to lose itself in waking up and arriving home.