The following is a poem written by Maureen, an attendee at Satsang meetings with Tom Das. After an interaction with Tom, Maureen wrote these following verses:
What am I?
What am I but well-being?
What am I but peace verging on an easy joy?
What am I but natural silence?
What am I but everything and nothing?
I am but spirit-air
moving as one being moved,
air moving in and out as one being breathed.
I am gone and spaciousness
has taken my place.
Easily I pray,
with one-pointed devotion,
mind so clear that it is a mirror
whose shininess is only
temporarily clouded by vapor,
and then again made clear!
I feel space between the shoulders,
a place that before was void of ease.
I think all is well in every part of the planet, as it should be.
I cannot be rushed, nor can I be
pulled from center by anyone or anything.
From whence is this grace?
What have I touched or said or done
that so much goodness has kissed me?
Mind so very clear,
the idea of happiness so foreign,
joy coming and going
that is so foreign to me now.
I am joy itself,
freedom itself,
everything.
Spaciousness, untouchable yet
intrinsic to the flow of everything,
behind every action and thought,
this is my home! This is my home!
I’m being carried now,
like a kitten, by the scruff*,
by its mother, hanging there,
loved, totally cared for.
Doing is foreign.
I’m simply being carried!
*the reference to a kitten being carried by its scruff is from a teaching by Sri Ramana Maharshi on Kittens and Monkeys from Guru Vachaka Kovai verse 696:
696. Those who, in this very birth
And with no effort on their part,
By force of grace divine, attain
Desire-free Awareness Pure
May look like passive kittens now
But in a former birth they were
Young monkeys clinging hard to mother
And see this video where the teaching is more fully explained:
Tom Das 