Today, I aspire to be nothing,
and no-one.
I am keenly aware
that none of the ways
I adorn myself bring me any closer
to who I am.
The slow, sweet glide
into the darkness
that, as I wait, fills
with the most splendid
of night’s visitations:
stars, moon, nature’s songs,
which still feel real, and true,
and I feel I am coming closer.
I undress; let my hair down,
I strip myself of words,
of the thoughts that form them.
This is the aspiration:
to rest in the stillness of being,
maybe find unrest at first,
a tremendous discomfort:
I am not who I thought I was.
The whole world, too, changes
as I see myself this way,
as a different self, then no-self.
And as I sit with this new
light of non-being,
I find I am still inhabiting this body,
a most sublime cosmic dust
and I get to dance with the sights,
sounds and textures of this space
we have been given
to play out our own evolution,
and I know that there is nothing
more sacred, or more important
than to tear myself away
from any of the comfortable notions
and face being nothing at all,
feeling with everything in me
how much closer
to the infinite nothing is, than I am.
– Tammy Stone Takahashi