By Malkeet Singh | Poem |
This is where Nanak lives — not in the past, but in presence.
There is a moment before thought arises, a stillness so pure that the universe feels like a single breath.
In that breath, there is no you and me, no distance between the creator and creation.
Only a quiet, shimmering truth:
Ik Onkar.
One Source.
One Light.
One pulse behind every heartbeat.
This is where Nanak lives — not in the past, but in presence.
Ik Onkar is not an idea.
It is an experience.
A dissolving.
A remembering.
It is the moment your heart bows to itself and realises: I was never separate.
Oneness Is Not Learned — It Is Revealed
We spend a lifetime accumulating knowledge, opinions, identities.
Yet the moment we sit quietly, like a child rediscovering wonder, something ancient begins to unfold inside us.
A softness. A knowing. A recognition so intimate that no prayer book could contain it.
Ik Onkar is not shouted, it is heard.
Not in temples alone, but beneath your ribs, in the quiet prayer your breath recites even without your permission.
Ik Onkar is what you feel when you look at a flower and forget your name for a second.
When a dog rests his head on your lap and time melts.
When sunlight lands gently on your face and your eyes close as though bowing to the warmth.
In those ordinary miracles, you meet God.
Not above. Not beyond. But here.
Inside everything. Including you.
Where Oneness Walks — Guru Ram Das Ji
If Guru Nanak gave us the vision of Oneness, Guru Ram Das Ji gifted humanity the experience of that Oneness in tenderness.
Nanak revealed the infinite.
Ram Das made it touchable.
Guru Ram Das Ji is not merely remembered for building Amritsar; He built a city of healing in the human heart.
His sacred bani is a river that washes away ego without force, restoring innocence like morning dew returning to a leaf.
He is humility in royal form.
Compassion wearing a crown yet kneeling before creation.
When I whisper, Dhan Dhan Guru Ram Das Ji
I do not call out to a distant Guru.
I awaken the fragrance of grace already planted within me.
A grace that says:
Where you are wounded, I bring balm.
Where you feel small, I lift you.
Where you fear you walk alone, I walk before you.
It is through Ram Das that I understand Nanak not as theology, but as love.
The Miracle of Seeing God in Everyone
True Oneness does not sit in prayer rooms — it walks in the street, it smiles at strangers, it forgives before apologies arrive.
Ik Onkar means: “Every face I meet is another form of the One.”
And some days, this knowing arrives easily — like sunlight finding your skin.
Other days, the ego resists, clinging to separateness, judgment, old wounds.
But even then, grace is patient.
To see God in saints is simple.
To see God in those who misunderstand us — that is where Oneness becomes practice.
Guru Ram Das Ji teaches:
Love does not choose.
Grace does not discriminate.
Wherever there is a heart that hurts,
there is the doorway to God.
Oneness in the Smallest Moments
I have seen Ik Onkar in mighty mountains, yes — but I have equally seen it in the gentle wag of Happy’s tail,in the kindness of a stranger opening a door, in the quiet moments when my wife’s eyes soften again after years of distance and silence.
These are not small things.
These are miracles disguised as everyday life.
The universe does not always announce grace with thunder.
Sometimes, it enters like Guru Ram Das — quiet, healing, unstoppable.
How Oneness Feels
When Ik Onkar enters your awareness, you do not float away —you arrive.
Fully.
Here.
Now.
Your breath deepens.
The heart opens as if it recognises itself in every direction.
Nothing is missing.
Nothing is broken.
Everything is as it must be.
This is not detachment from life —it is falling in love with life so deeply
that separation becomes impossible.
Returning to the One
So, I sit. Not as a seeker.
But as one being found, again and again, by the same Light that breathed me into existence.
I whisper softly:
Ik Onkar… Satnam… Dhan Dhan Guru Ram Das Ji…
And I feel creation bow back.
In that exchange, I understand:
I am not chanting to the Divine.
I am chanting as the Divine remembering Itself.
There is no ending to this journey because there was never a beginning.
The One has always been. And the One will always be.
Nanak is the river.
Ram Das is the sweetness of its water.
And we —we are droplets learning again that we are sea.
When you remember Ik Onkar, you do not escape the world — you embrace it more fully.
Every bird song is kirtan.
Every breeze is hukam.
Every heartbeat is a prayer.
And every moment is an invitation:
Come back to Oneness.
Come home to the Guru within.
When we see All As One, we do not become saints —we become human again.
Whole. Humble. Home.
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