The seeker set out, a map in his hand,
Tracing the footprints in well-traveled sand.
He spoke of the journey, the hunger to know,
Yet feared the great River’s unyielding flow.

He knelt in the temple, he fasted, he prayed,
Lit incense and candles, his altar arrayed.
He chanted the verses, he bowed and he swayed,
Yet deep in his heart, he hoped Truth delayed.

For what would he be, if he truly let go?
If walls turned to wind, if self ceased to show?
The voice that named him, the mask he had worn,
Would vanish like mist in the Light of the morn.

He asked for the flame, but recoiled from the Fire,
Sang of surrender, yet clung to desire.
He spoke of the deathless, the vast and the Free,
Yet whispered, “Not yet—at least, not for me.”

The ego, so clever, devised its disguise,
A seeker of Heaven with earth in its eyes.
A pilgrim who wandered but never arrived,
Lest finding the Truth meant he’d not survive.

For God is not distant, nor locked in a scroll,
Not trapped in the heavens, but deep in the Soul.
Yet to meet That in fullness, the self must dissolve—
A riddle the seeker could never resolve.

So round and around the circle he spun,
A race never finished, a prize never won.
For the seeking itself was the trick of the mind—
A way to keep searching, and never to find.