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I must have been incredibly simple or drunk or insane to sneak into my own house and steal money, to climb over the fence and take my own vegetables. But no more. I’ve gotten free of that ignorant fist that was pinching and twisting my secret self. The universe and the light of the stars come through me.
Like a wheat grain that breaks open in the ground, then grows, then gets harvested, then crushed in the mill for flour, then baked, then crushed again between teeth to become a person’s deepest understanding. Lost in love, like the songs the planters sing the night after they sow the seed.”
“You can’t imagine how I’ve looked for something for you. Nothing seemed appropriate. You don’t take gold down into a goldmine, or a drop of water to the Sea of Oman!
There is nothing worse than thinking you are well enough. More than anything, self-complacency blocks the workmanship. Put your vileness up to a mirror and weep. Get that self-satisfaction flowing out of you! Satan thought, “I am better than Adam,” and that better than is still strongly in us. Your stream water may look clean, but there’s unstirred matter on the bottom. Your sheikh can dig a side channel that will drain that waste off. Trust your wound to a teacher’s surgery. Flies collect on a wound. They cover it, those flies of your self-protecting feelings, your love for what you think is
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You are not a prophet, but go humbly on the way of the prophets, and you can arrive where they are. Don’t try to steer the boat. Don’t open a shop by yourself. Listen. Keep silent. You are not God’s mouthpiece. Try to be an ear, and if you do speak, ask for explanations.
Copper doesn’t know it’s copper, until it’s changed to gold. Your loving doesn’t know its majesty, until it knows its helplessness.
Tree limbs rise and fall like the ecstatic arms of those who have submitted to the mystical life. Leaf sounds talk together like poets making fresh metaphors. The green felt cover slips, and we get a flash of the mirror underneath.
The conventional opinion of this poetry is, it shows great optimism for the future. 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.
agony
child again
The beast you ride is your various appetites. Change your wantings. When you prune weak branches, the remaining fruit get tastier. Lust can be redirected, so that even when it takes you backward, it goes toward shelter.
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.
Crying out loud for help is Rumi’s point. With that vulnerable breaking open in the psyche, the milk of grace starts to flow.
Crying out loud and weeping are great resources. A nursing mother, all she does is wait to hear her child. Just a little beginning-whimper, and she’s there. God created the child, that is, your wanting, so that it might cry out, so that milk might come. Cry out! Don’t be stolid and silent with your pain. Lament! And let the milk of loving flow into you.
If you want to wear a robe of spiritual sovereignty, let your eyes weep with the wanting.”
life is short. Use the portion that’s left to deepen yourself. Don’t waste time greeting people!’ I asked him to give me some advice. ‘Stay in the presence of those who remind you of your lord, who not only speak wisdom, but are that.’ Then he went back into meditation.”
Mystical poetry and other practices may function this way, as soap that dances with what disturbs our clarity. Then at some moment they drop away and leave us clean, ready to be worn again.
You don’t know me. No one knows me. God has hidden my sneakiness. Satan taught me tricks, but after a time, those became easy, and I taught Satan some new variations. God saw what I did, but chose not to publicly reveal my sin. And now, I am sewn back into wholeness! Whatever I’ve done, now was not done. Whatever obedience I didn’t do, now I did! Pure, noble, free, like a cypress, like a lily, is how I suddenly am. I said, Oh no! Help me! And that Oh no! became a rope let down in my well. I’ve climbed out to stand here in the sun. One moment I was at the bottom of a
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I have given each being a separate and unique way of seeing and knowing and saying that knowledge. What seems wrong to you is right for him. What is poison to one is honey to someone else. Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship, these mean nothing to me. I am apart from all that. Ways of worshiping are not to be ranked as better or worse than one another. Hindus do Hindu things. The Dravidian Muslims in India do what they do. It’s all praise, and it’s all right.
So the ruby has nothing engraved on it! It doesn’t need markings.
When you eventually see through the veils to how things really are, you will keep saying again and again, “This is certainly not like we thought it was!”
Having nothing produces provisions. Ask a difficult question, and the marvelous answer appears. Build a ship, and there’ll be water to float it. The tender-throated infant cries and milk drips from the mother’s breast. Be thirsty for the ultimate water, and then be ready for what will come pouring from the spring.
“What I thought was rudeness was really love. You took away my grief, and I was grieved! God has shown me everything, but at that moment I was preoccupied within myself.”
Look carefully around you and recognize the luminosity of souls. Sit beside those who draw you to that.
Someone once asked a great sheikh what sufism was. “The feeling of joy when sudden disappointment comes.”
Don’t grieve for what doesn’t come. Some things that don’t happen keep disasters from happening.
Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it.
Water, stories, the body, all the things we do, are mediums that hide and show what’s hidden. Study them, and enjoy this being washed with a secret we sometimes know, and then not.
