THE EYE UPON US

I feel the
eye upon me

Watching my
every step;

Do you feel
the eye upon you

Watching
your every step?

I feel the
ear around me

Listening
to my every word;

Do you feel
the presence

Of the
listener when you speak?

The
indwelling observer grows slowly;

We create
him with every objective breath

The more we
forget ourselves

The more we
become ourselves again.

The God in
which I do not believe

Dwells in
me as much as He dwells in you;

For the God
in which we do not believe is

The true
crucible of consciousness.

The eye I
feel on me

Is the same
eye you feel on you;

And nowhere
is the eye stronger

than in the
presence of our master.

We are
pages in a book

He reads
with ease

the
expressions and gestures we use

To say what
we thought we said

While we
exposed ourselves instead.

In the
meditation hall,

The ear
with which you hear

Is the ear
of the master

And that is
my ear too.

We see
ourselves though his eyes

We hear
ourselves through his ears

There is no
escape from his attention

Neither
time nor distance distracts him.

The sages
said,

“He
who knows himself knows his Master”

but they
then also whispered

“He
who knows his Master knows Himself.”

And you
think you’ve caught me misquoting,

but is not
our lord our master and is our master not our lord?

The lord of
the present moment is the lord of all moments,

past,
present and future.

This is the
goal to which the devout strive

To see
themselves through their Lord’s eyes

Sing
“Isq’allah ma’bud la’llah”

And
remember, “I see God in you,”

For there is an eye upon us

That never sleeps,

An ear that hears each whisper….

Found in memoria to Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh, Master of the Nimatullahi Order of Sufis, who passed away from this world on October 10, 2008, in Oxford, England.