Seeker & Sage
Dedicated to Jeremy.
~Artwork Q & A: Seeker & Sage and Poem by A.Void.
Heaven’s Open Door
Judgements were hanging on every word,
And, like an old man,
I was already carrying my walking cane to point at this, at that.
I did know better than anyone, didn’t I?
My opinions showing me doors that were locked,
Yet my sturdy cane made way to bang at doors
That stiffened with force, or yielded only to barrage and barricade.
Spirituality was some high-strung idea, a hypothesis at best—
Like all science with their Q’s and P’s: P’s for possibilities, but nothing ever clear,
Only seemingly real in a fleeting glance or moment,
Then off to be changed by some new whim or fancy called experiment.
Truth came to me not by chance, but by dare—
Dare I investigate a moment that came like Wind,
That defied the mind’s hold on me?
With rebellious trepidation, I set out with my cane,
Only to be coshed ten thousand times a day
On the stubbornness of my ways.
“Stay down,” I said, “and crawl back”—
Yet the craving of the Soul knew nothing of the word “no,”
Nor labels, boundaries, or borders, it seemed.
Shakily, I got up each time,
Realizing how heavy this crutch called mind had become.
It bamboozled and tantalized me,
Yet more a baboon trapped in ego seemed the tantric drip I was on.
The inner trip became clear suddenly—
Just like that Wind that had swept away clouds to reveal glowing moon,
Beckoning forth wonder and mystery of a timeless here and now.
I embraced the expansive sky,
Mesmerized by the noise of silence,
And Gaia’s sweet nothings pounding on the flesh of my ears.
My cane, I had thought, was the key to open all doors—
Yet I left it at heaven’s gate
When I saw the door to Oneness had always been open.
Fool though I was, I dropped questions as I went,
Answers becoming my Solstice and Solitude,
Until even these keys—no longer jostling and jangling,
But smooth-fitting and well-placed—
Were left with Wind to dispense as seeds—
As Abundance that always was.
From The Arrogance of Knowing to The Beckoning of Surrender to Awareness & Wholeness.
Based on a full moon night of a young man opening and surrendering to Heaven’s Open Door.
🌕Commentary for the Journeyer
(Tone, Symbolism, and the Inner Terrain)
This poem unfolds as a quiet rebellion—against the illusion of knowing, against the mind’s insistence on control. Told in the voice of the seeker who once thought he knew, it walks us through a full moon night of reckoning, shedding, and deep seeing.
The tone carries humility stitched with humor—the cane, for instance, becomes a clever metaphor for the mind’s pride in its opinions. It knocks at every door as if truth were something to demand. But doors stiffen, or collapse under force. And so begins the soul’s undoing.
Each symbol is intentionally layered:
The cane is the intellect, the habit of pointing, naming, and judging.
The doors are thresholds of consciousness—locked not by design, but by approach.
Wind, Moon, and Gaia are not teachers in themselves, but messengers of Awareness.
The ten thousand beatings nod to Taoism’s "ten thousand things"—the forms of maya that humble the seeker until they finally let go.
The tone shifts subtly—from assertive and cerebral, to cracked open and reverent. As the mind stumbles, presence begins to whisper. The inner trip becomes clarity. The cane is left at heaven’s gate not because the seeker gives up—but because he no longer needs to knock.
In the final lines, keys become seeds, scattered by Wind—truth no longer grasped or guarded, but given freely. The journey comes full circle. Nothing was missing. Abundance had always been.
Let this poem be a moonlit mirror for your own path—wherever you are on it.
🌕Questions for the Journeyer
(For Introspection, Reflection & Meditation)
What “cane” do I still carry, believing it helps?
Where in my life am I banging on locked doors?
What moment of Wind have I ignored or misunderstood?
Can I allow abundance to scatter through surrender, not control?
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This is rich in symbolism. The seeker, stooped and aged, represents the burdened mind—a life lived in opinions, judgments, and accumulated “knowledge.” His cane is the crutch of mental constructs, of thinking one knows.
In contrast, the sage—youthful, upright, meditative—represents renewed being, free from the weight of the known. The sage is not young in age, but in essence. He is ever new, as Tolle might say—renewed in presence, unburdened by history.
🌀 The indomitable spirit is youthful not in time, but in timelessness. True surrender restores the seeker to innocence—a quality often mistaken for naivety, but which is really openness.
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The sage does not possess answers like data in a vault. Instead, the sage has become the answerless answer—a living stillness that reflects truth without needing to define it.
“Why do sages say they know nothing?”
Because what is truly known cannot be spoken. Knowing in the spiritual sense is being, not intellectual grasp.The poem illustrates this: the seeker seeks keys, but they jostle and confuse. The sage has dropped the cane entirely—no need to knock on doors when there are no doors.
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In Taoism, the “ten thousand things” symbolize the entire manifest world—the illusions, distractions, and attachments of form.
"Coshed ten thousand times" = Struck down daily by each of the 10,000 illusions that draw one from the Tao.
Similarly, in yoga, the 10,000-petaled lotus can represent the ultimate flowering of consciousness. In the poem’s line, it reflects:
The struggle of the seeker through maya
The violent compassion of awakening—the ego gets “coshed,” but only to reveal clarity
This phrasing is brilliant because it captures the spiritual paradox: the beating down is not punishment, but grace in disguise.
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Because the Self one searches for is the very essence of the one searching. The path appears to lead outward—through teachers, books, temples—but ends up curling back to the source.
This is Advaita at its core: Tat Tvam Asi — You Are That.
So your seeker, hobbling forward with cane and questions, eventually stands at the open door—only to realize it had never been locked, and he had never left.
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Yes. In the poem, they symbolize how over-reliance on the intellect tries to reduce spirituality into testable bits. P’s (probabilities) and Q’s (queries) are metaphors for the scientific method that dismisses what cannot be measured.
The “inner science” reclaims this idea, saying:
Yes, be rigorous.
But turn the microscope inward.
Let your method be stillness, your observation be direct perception.
It’s not a rejection of science—but a call to transcend its narrow lens and apply its sincerity to inner phenomena: thought, emotion, consciousness.
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Absolutely—and the poem narrates this perfectly.
Self-righteous intellect: The cane, the judgment, the banging on locked doors
Humbling and struggle: Coshed ten thousand times
Reluctant surrender: The dropping of labels, crawling back, getting up
Spiritual awakening: The glowing moon, the expansive sky
Return to wholeness: Realizing the door was never closed
“From wholeness to wholeness, wholeness still remains” is a poetic mirror of that truth:
The journey never altered what is.
Only our seeing changed.
The journey is a movement in awareness, not in Being.
Is the journey part of the illusion of maya?
Yes—and yet, it is also the dream that wakes itself up.
In the dream of separation, we walk the path, ask questions, fall and rise. But from the view of the Absolute, nothing happened. You never left.
So yes—the journey, the seeker, the cane, the keys—all are maya. But they are divine maya—the play of consciousness as it rediscovers itself.
