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Poetry
Chaikhana
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About Ivan M. GrangerTimeline (1969 - ) |
![Ivan M. Granger, Ivan M. Granger poetry, Secular or Eclectic, Secular or Eclectic poetry, poetry, [TRADITION SUB2] poetry, Yoga / Hindu poetry](images/GrangerIv_sm.jpg) |
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Original Language |
City Fox
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true native
his land has grown strange about him lean with life on silent steps through twilight he glides glanced by chance or by patience perhaps he stops in the alley way waiting for you to pass
2004
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The fox in this poem is the Divine Self.
The "strange" land that has grown about him, the city of the title, is the construction of thoughts, projections, concepts, and artificial divisions imagined by the busy mind.
Yet, even in this unwelcoming environment, the fox, the Self, remains. He is the "true native," present before the mind's constructions. He belongs right where he is. He knows all that has grown about him is transitory, that it cannot last.
In this city, genuine sustenance is often limited, so the fox is lean. From the viewpoint of the city dweller, the mind, the Self seems to hardly have any substance at all. Yet its very leanness is the proof of its authenticity, its uncompromised, untamed life. Through its leanness, life radiates fiercely!
The Self is silent, and known in silence. Without a sound it moves through the artificial world, true to its essential nature.
It is active in the realm of twilight, the stalking ground between the conscious world of daylight and the unconscious world of nighttime. If you wish to catch sight of this one, you must keep watch in twilight, at the meeting point between the two worlds.
If by chance, or through determined, patient spiritual practice, you catch a glimpse of the Self, the hidden fox stops in plain sight, revealing himself in his full, living, wild glory. Actually, it is not so much the Self that stops; it is "you" who stops, the ego, the false self. You are stunned into stillness by the sight of such essential life, that has been living in the shadows, about your house, all along -- and you somehow never noticed it before.
The Self, the fox, is spied in an alleyway. The alleyway is the path ignored in the world of the city; it is there, but forgotten, overgrown, avoided, and this is where the fox dwells and hunts. The alleyway is the shushumna, the primary energetic pathway associated with the spinal column.
The Self waits once seen. It waits for you to "pass," to drop the ego sense of self as no longer useful. It waits for you to recognize that you are not you at all but That. You are the fox, the real Self, and none other.
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Ivan
M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright ©
2002 - 2008 by Ivan M. Granger.
All other material is copyrighted by the respective authors, translators and/or
publishers.
