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It is nothing but a tongue of light describing a refuge.
Remember the passage, We are with you wherever you are.
In somber dignity, I used to sit on my mat and pray.
In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems.
Imagine a man selling his donkey to be with Jesus. Now imagine him selling Jesus to get a ride on a donkey. This does happen.
Jesus can transform a drunk into gold.
Never think that you are worthless. God has paid an enormous amount for you, and the gifts keep arriving.
I say one must not travel during the holy month. Then I start out, and wonderful things happen.
There are values in pain that are difficult to see without the presence of a guest.
Walk with grief like a good friend. Listen to what he says.
Every object and being in the universe is a jar
Every jarful spills and makes the earth more shining, as though covered in satin.
Those that stay and live by the Tigris grow so ecstatic that they throw rocks at the jugs, and the jugs become perfect. They shatter. The pieces dance, and water…Do you see?
You knock at the door of reality, shake your thought-wings, loosen your shoulders, and open.
Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
I need more grace than I thought.
Falcon tears are food for a true human being, perfume for Gabriel.
Be courageous and discipline yourself.
Work. Keep digging your well. Don’t think about getting off from work. Submit to a daily practice.
This night will pass. Then we have work to do.
The Price of Kissing I would love to kiss you. The price of kissing is your life. Now my loving is running toward my life shouting, What a bargain, let’s buy it.
Wash your hands and face of this charade. Anyone who wants these prizes flares up quickly like a wood chip.
Words are ways we add up breath, counting stress and syllable with our exacting musical knack that takes us farther and farther from zero.
I have traveled east and west not knowing which way I was going, following the moon, lost inside God.
The body learned from spirit how to travel.
A saint’s body moves in the unconditioned way, though it seems to be in conditionedness.
I came to the shore at twilight and saw seven candles.
Then the seven became one, in the middle of the sky’s rim. Then that fanned out to seven again. There were connections between the candles that cannot be said. I saw, but I cannot say. They became seven men and then seven trees, so dense with leaves and fruit no limbs were visible.
Am I dreaming? I walk up to the trees. I eat the fruit. I may as well believe. Then the seven trees become
There are thousands of wines that can take over our minds. Don’t think all ecstasies are the same. Jesus was lost in his love for God. His donkey was drunk with barley.
Judge like a king, and choose the purest, not the ones adulterated with fear, or some urgency about “what’s needed.” Drink the wine that moves you as a camel moves when it’s been untied, and is just ambling about.
In the silence many began to see with Uthman’s light. This is how a living master opens the inner eye.
Break open your personal self to taste the story of the nutmeat soul.
Let us try a dumb experiment.
As Much as a Pen Knows Do you think that I know what I’m doing? That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself? As much as a pen knows what it’s writing, or the ball can guess where it’s going next.
I can’t explain the goings, or the comings. You enter suddenly, and I am nowhere again. Inside the majesty.
Mysteries are not to be solved. The eye goes blind when it only wants to see why.
But don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth, so everyone will understand the passage, We have opened you.
On every trip, have only one objective, to meet those who are friends inside the presence.
If you stay home, keep the same purpose, to meet the innermost presence as it lives in people. Be a pilgrim to the kaaba inside a human being, and Mecca will rise into view on its own.
So human beings come to this world to do particular work. That work is the purpose, and each is specific to the person. If you don’t do it, it’s as though a knife of the finest tempering were nailed into a wall to hang things on. For a penny an iron nail could be bought to serve
Give your life to the one who already owns your breath and your moments.
There is a path from me to you that I am constantly looking for, so I try to keep clear and still as water does with the moon.
I am the one with heart-vision. I have torn open the veil.
Sleep deeply wherever you are on the way. Maybe some traveler will wake you.
Listen to the sound of waves within you.
and always we have forgotten our former states, except in early spring when we almost remember being green again.
Humankind is being led along an evolving course, through this migration of intelligences, and though we seem to be sleeping, there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream.
It will eventually startle us back to the truth of who we are.
I don’t mind if my companions wander away for a while. They will come back like a smiling drunk. Thirsty ones die of their thirst.
