EGYPTIAN BLUE LOTUS PRAYER

 

As if I’d slept a thousand years underwater

I wake into a new season.

I am the blue lotus rising.

I am the cup of dreams and memory opening -

I, the thousand petaled flower.

At dawn the sun rises naked and new as a babe;

I open myself and am entered by light.

This is the joy,

The slow awakening into fire

As one by one the petals open, 

As the fingers that held tight the secret unfurl,

I let go of the past

And release the fragrance of flowers.

I open and light descends,

Fills me and passes through,

Each thin blue petal reflected

Perfectly in clear water.

I am that lotus filled with light

Reflected in the world.

I float content within myself,

One flower with a thousand petals,

One life lived a thousand years

Without haste, 

One Universe sparking a thousand stars,

One god alive in a thousand people.

If you stood on a summer’s morning

On the bank of a brilliant sky,

You would see the thousand petals

And say that together they make the lotus.

But if you lived in its heart,

Invisible from without,

You might see how the ecstasy

At its fragrant core

Gives rise to its thousand petals.

What is beautiful

Is always that which is itself,

In essence, a certainty of being.

I marvel at myself

And the things of earth.

I float among the days

In peace, content,

Not part of the world,

The world is all the parts of me.

I open toward the light

And lift myself to the gods

On a perfume of prayer.

I ask for nothing beyond myself;

I own everything I need.

I am content in the company of god,

A prayer that contains its own answer.

I am the lotus.

As if from a dream,

I awake laughing.

 

From the Egyptian Book of Coming Forth Into the Light of Day