Become the Sea

Come, plunge into the sea and let go of this 'I' and 'we,' for until you become the sea yourself, you will never know the sea's true essence. If one day a wave from that sea sweeps you into this desert, it will drown you so completely that you forget the desert ever existed. If you see the waves of the sea as nothing but waves, not the sea itself, I know for certain you will never see the named reality behind the names. Once you have made all your numbers into one, nothing remains but the One; when you become a single tomorrow, you see yesterday and tomorrow as one. Move from multiplicity toward unity, then from unity back to multiplicity; only by the path of unity and multiplicity can you truly know the names. What do you know of what lies beneath and above the earth and sky, when you, such as you are, have never even seen your own below and above? Since you are drunk on the beloved's essence, sink deep into yourself and be still; both this hidden and this visible arise from that same hiddenness and appearing. Listen, Maghrebi: if you speak of the Phoenix of the West, you must seek that Phoenix somewhere beyond both East and West.