The Hawk and the Weaver: A Journey into Oneness

 I stand at the confluence of histories and identities—born into a Sanatani culture, carrying a Muslim name and legacy, yet refusing to be caged by any one organized religion. For me, every path is true in its essence, for all religions are rivers flowing into the same ocean of being. Their origins lie in pure consciousness, and it was only when patriarchal and societal structures seized them that distortions and divisions emerged. Beyond those constructs, there is only unity—where God is both the originator and the instrument, and where we, too, are both the seeker and the sought.

In this understanding, destiny is not imposed upon us; it is chosen in our original state, before birth, as a stage for our soul to experience, learn, and evolve. Free will is the current that carries us toward liberation—Moksha, Fanaa, Nirvana, Christ-consciousness. The words may differ, but the truth is one: Tat Tvam Asi—“Thou art That.”

Kabir, the 15th-century mystic weaver, lived this truth in simplicity. Born in Kashi, raised in the household of a humble weaver, he became the voice of oneness in a world torn between Hindu and Muslim divides. Kabir sang of a God beyond form, a God untouched by ritual or caste, a God who resides in love itself. His dohas echo across centuries: “Dukh mein sumiran sab kare, sukh mein kare na koye”—in suffering we remember God, but in joy we forget. He invited us to live honestly, earn with dignity, and dissolve the illusion of separateness through devotion and remembrance.

When I read Autobiography of a Yogi, I felt the same current that Kabir sang of—divinity experienced not through ritual, but through vibration, alignment, and surrender. Paramhansa Yogananda describes saints who could appear in two places at once, masters who bent time and space, and visions that dissolve the walls between seen and unseen. He shows us that our deepest reality is not bound to the body, but is consciousness itself. In his words, miracles are not violations of natural law but expressions of higher laws—realities accessible when one lives in tune with Spirit.

Last night, I dreamt of myself as a hawk. Strong, fierce, and soaring, I was trying to rescue another “me” who had fallen weakly between the wedge of a cliff. In that moment, I realized the hawk was not saving the fallen self—it was evolving it. The struggle was not about climbing out of the cliff, but about shifting vibration to recognize which reality is true. The fallen self is the construct—the weight of conditioning, fear, and limitation. The soaring hawk is the essence, the awakened I, vibrating at the frequency of truth.

Yogananda wrote that in meditation, when the mind is stilled, one perceives life as light—flowing, unbroken, indivisible. That vision aligns with Kabir’s insistence that God cannot be found in temples or mosques, but only in the living current of the heart. Both remind us that truth is not reached by external searching, but by dissolving into inner awareness.

Perhaps the hawk in my dream is my inner Kabir, my inner Yogi, weaving threads of wisdom into wings of flight, reminding me that I am both the rescuer and the rescued, both the fall and the flight. To evolve is not to deny the fall, but to embrace it as part of the climb, part of the cosmic play chosen by the soul. And when I shift into that truth, when I whisper Tat Tvam Asi, I remember: I am That, and That is all there is.