The Essential Rumi
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7%
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Being human means entering this place where entrancing varieties of desire are served.
7%
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All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.
7%
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Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? I cannot stop asking. If I could taste one sip of an answer, I could break out of this prison for drunks.
8%
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Drink all your passion, and be a disgrace.
8%
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Close both eyes to see with the other eye.
8%
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Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought! Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?
8%
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Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence. Flow down and down in always widening rings of being.
8%
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All people on the planet are children, except for a very few. No one is grown up except those free of desire.
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Experience that breathing. From books and words come fantasy, and sometimes, from fantasy comes union.
8%
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Every object, every being, is a jar full of delight. Be a connoisseur, and taste with caution.
9%
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But listen to me: for one moment, quit being sad.
10%
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Try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it. Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing, where something might be planted, a seed, possibly, from the Absolute.
12%
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What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle. Your boundaries are your quest.
12%
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The soul lives there in the silent breath.
15%
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Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
19%
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How to cure bad habits? Send me back to you.
19%
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Look as long as you can at the friend you love, no matter whether that friend is moving away from you or coming back toward you.
19%
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Don’t let your throat tighten with fear. Take sips of breath all day and night, before death closes your mouth.
21%
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Brother, stand the pain. Escape the poison of your impulses. The sky will bow to your beauty, if you do. Learn to light the candle. Rise with the sun. Turn away from the cave of your sleeping. That way a thorn expands to a rose. A particular glows with the universal.
22%
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Stay with friends who support you in these. Talk with them about sacred texts, and how you’re doing, and how they’re doing, and keep your practices together.
23%
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Be concentrated and leonine in the hunt for what is your true nourishment.
24%
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Human beings are discourse. That flowing moves through you whether you say anything or not. Everything that happens is filled with pleasure and warmth because of the delight of the discourse that’s always going on.
25%
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There’s no blocking the speechflow-river-running-all-carrying momentum that true intimacy is.
27%
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Lovers can’t sleep when they feel the privacy of the beloved all around them.
39%
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But Father Reason says, No need to announce the future! This now is it. This. Your deepest need and desire is satisfied by the moment’s energy here in your hand.
40%
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The beast you ride is your various appetites. Change your wantings. When you prune weak branches, the remaining fruit get tastier.
41%
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“Don’t theorize about essence!” All speculations are just more layers of covering. Human beings love coverings! They think the designs on the curtains are what’s being concealed. Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don’t claim them. Feel the artistry moving through, and be silent.
42%
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Respond to every call that excites your spirit. Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back toward disease and death.