“If you want to be more alive, love is the truest health.”

“What you seek is seeking you.“

“Silence is the language of God,
all else is poor translation.”

“Woman is the light of God.“

“This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet. Love is an open secret, the most obvious thing in the world and the most hidden, with no why to how it keeps its mystery.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore. Whatever purifies you is the right path. It’s your road, and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you. Knock, and He’ll open the door. Vanish, and He’ll make you shine like the sun. Fall, and He’ll raise you to the heavens. Become nothing, and He’ll turn you into everything.

Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames. Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being. If not, leave this gathering. Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty. Love isn’t the work of the tender and the gentle. Love is the work of wrestlers. The one who becomes a servant of lovers is really a fortunate sovereign. Don’t ask anyone about Love; ask Love about Love. Whenever we manage to love without expectations, calculations, negotiations, we are indeed in heaven. Although the road is never ending take a step and keep walking, do not look fearfully into the distance… On this path let the heart be your guide for the body is hesitant and full of fear.

Keep your intelligence white hot and your grief glistening so your life will stay fresh. You were born with potential. You were born with goodness and trust. You were born with ideals and dreams. You were born with greatness. You were born with wings. You are not meant for crawling, so don’t. You have wings. Learn to use them and fly.

Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. Respond to every call that excites your spirit. Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought! Why do you stay in prison, when the door is so wide open? Shine like the whole universe is yours.

You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?”

Do you know what you are? You are a manuscript of a divine letter. You are a mirror reflecting a noble face. This universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you are already that. Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself. Look past your thoughts, so you may drink the pure nectar of This Moment. There is a loneliness more precious than life. There is a freedom more precious than the world. Infinitely more precious than life and the world is that moment when one is alone with God.

Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion. Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder. Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray. Only from the heart can you touch the sky.

The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along. When I am with you, we stay up all night. When you’re not here, I can’t go to sleep. Praise God for those two insomnias! And the difference between them. I want to see you. Know your voice. Recognize you when you first come ’round the corner. Sense your scent when I come into a room you’ve just left. Know the lift of your heel, the glide of your foot. Become familiar with the way you purse your lips then let them part, just the slightest bit, when I lean in to your space and kiss you. I want to know the joy of how you whisper ‘more’.

That which God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, He said to my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful. The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart.

Remember: The rose’s rarest essence lives in the thorns.

Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy. These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them. What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle. The cure for pain is in the pain. The wound is the place where the Light enters you. Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form. Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure. Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love. There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place. Love is the cure, for your pain will keep giving birth to more pain until your eyes constantly exhale love as effortlessly as your body yields its scent.

This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Take someone who doesn’t keep score, who’s not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing, who has not the slightest interest even in his own personality: he’s free. All people on the planet are children, except for a very few. No one is grown up except those free of desire. The world’s flattery and hypocrisy is a sweet morsel: eat less of it, for it is full of fire. Its fire is hidden while its taste is manifest, but its smoke becomes visible in the end.

They say there is a doorway from heart to heart, but what is the use of a door when there are no walls? Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation. Lovers find secret places inside this violent world where they make transactions with beauty. A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home. Let go of your mind and then be mindful. Close your ears and listen! Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words. The heart has its own language. The heart knows a hundred thousand ways to speak.

“Let silence take you to the core of life.”

In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art. I am your moon and your moonlight too. I am your flower garden and your water too. I have come all this way, eager for you. Without shoes or shawl I want you to laugh. To kill all your worries. To love you. To nourish you.

My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there. This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief. Into this new love, die. Your way begins on the other side. Become the sky. Take an axe to the prison wall; escape. Walk out like someone suddenly born into color. Do it now!”

“And remember: the way you make love is the way God will be with you.”

“I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.”

“Die in Love and stay alive forever.”

***

~Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, Mevlânâ/Mawlānā, Mevlevî/Mawlawī, and more popularly simply as Rumi, was a 13th-century Persian poet, Hanafi faqih, Islamic scholar, Maturidi theologian, and Sufi mystic originally from Greater Khorasan in Greater Iran.

Excerpts from Rumi’s poems.

©Excellence Reporter 2020