POETRY: Rumi- mysticism

A friend remarks to the Prophet,
‘Why is it I get screwed in business deals?

It's like a spell. I become distracted

by business talk and make wrong decisions.’

Muhammad replies,
Stipulate with every transaction

that you need three days to make sure.’

Deliberation is one of the qualities of God.

Throw a dog a bit of something.

He sniffs to see if he wants it.

Be that careful.

Sniff with your wisdom-nose.

Get clear. Then decide.

The universe came into being gradually

over six days.
God could have just commanded,

Be!

Little by little a person reaches forty and fifty and sixty,

and feels more complete.
God could have thrown

full-blown prophets

flying through the cosmos in an instant.

Jesus said one word, and a dead man sat up,

but Creation usually unfolds,

like calm breakers.

Constant, slow movement teaches us to keep working

like a small creek that stays clear,

that doesn't stagnate, but finds a way

through numerous details, deliberately.

Deliberation is born of joy,

like a bird from an egg.

Birds don't resemble eggs!

Think how different the hatching out is.

A white-leathery snake egg, a sparrow's egg;

a quince seed, an apple seed: Very different things

look similar at one stage.

These leaves, our bodily personalities, seem identical,

but the globe of soul-fruit we make,

each is elaborately unique.

Let’s ask God to help us to self-control:

for one who lacks it, lacks His Grace.

The undisciplined person doesn't wrong himself alone—

but sets fire to the whole world.

Discipline enabled Heaven to be filled with light;

discipline enabled the angels to be immaculate and holy.

The peacock’s plumage is his enemy.

The world is the mountain,

and each action, the shout that echoes back.

This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace

to extract the silver from the dross

The spiritual path wrecks the body

and afterwards restores it to health.

Anger and lust make a man squint;

When self-interest appears, virtue hides:

Fortunate is he who does not carry envy as a companion.

If ten lamps are present in one place,

each differs in form from another;

yet you can’t distinguish whose radiance is whose

when you focus on the light.

In the field of spirit there is no division;

no individuals exist.

The idol of your self is the mother of all idols.

To regard the self as easy to subdue is a mistake.

If you wish mercy, show mercy to the weak.

The stoppered jar, though in rough water,

floated because of its empty heart.

When the wind of poverty is in anyone,

she floats in peace on the waters of this world.

As long as desires are fresh, faith is not;

for it is these desires that lock that gate.

The tongue of mutual understanding is quite special:

to be one of heart is better than to have a common tongue.

If you dig a pit for others to fall into,

you will fall into it yourself.

Many of the faults you see in others, dear reader,

are your own nature reflected in them.

With will, fire becomes sweet water.

The lion who breaks the enemy’s ranks

is a minor hero

compared to the lion who overcomes himself.

O son, only those whose spiritual eye has been opened

know how compulsive we are.

Whoever gives reverence receives reverence.

The intellectual quest,

though fine as pearl or coral,

is not the spiritual search.

The intelligent desire self-control;

children want candy.

Since in order to speak, one must first listen,

learn to speak by listening.

When, with just a taste, envy and deceit arise,

and ignorance and forgetfulness are born,

know you have tasted the unlawful.

Know that a word suddenly shot from the tongue

is like an arrow shot from the bow.

O tongue, you are an endless treasure.

O tongue, you are also an endless disease.

I am burning.

If any one lacks tinder,

let him set his rubbish ablaze with my fire.

Although your desire tastes sweet,

doesn't the Beloved desire you

to be desireless?

The world’s flattery and hypocrisy is a sweet morsel:

eat less of it, for it is full of fire.

Forgetfulness of God, beloved,

is the support of this world;

spiritual intelligence its ruin.

For Intelligence belongs to that other world,

and when it prevails, this material world is overthrown.

Were there no men of vision,

all who are blind would be dead.

All these griefs within our hearts

arise from the smoke and dust

of our existence and vain desires.

Whoever lives sweetly dies painfully:

whoever serves his body doesn't nourish his soul.

Your thinking is like a camel driver,

and you are the camel:

it drives you in every direction under its bitter control.

If you are wholly perplexed and in straits,

have patience, for patience is the key to joy.

Fast from thoughts, fast:

thoughts are like the lion and the wild ass;

men’s hearts are the thickets they haunt.

If you are irritated by every rub,

how will your mirror be polished?

Anyone in whom the troublemaking self has died,

sun and cloud obey.

If you wish to shine like day,

burn up the night of self-existence.

Dissolve in the Being who is everything.

There is no worse sickness for the soul,

O you who are proud, than this pretense of perfection.

The heart and eyes must bleed a lot

before self-complacency falls away.

Can the water of a polluted stream

clear out the dung?

Can human knowledge sweep away

the ignorance of the sensual self?

How does a sword fashion its own hilt?

Go, entrust the cure of this wound to a surgeon,

Many are the unbelievers who long for submission,

but their stumbling block

is reputation and pride and continual desires.

I’m the devoted slave

of anyone who doesn't claim

to have attained dining with God

at every way station.

Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence: 
This place made from our love for that emptiness!
Yet somehow comes emptiness, 
this existence goes.
Praise to that happening, over and over! 
For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.
Then one swoop, one swing of the arm, 
that work is over.
Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope, 
free of mountainous wanting.
The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw 
blown off into emptiness.
These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning: 
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:
Words and what they try to say swept 
out the window, down the slant of the roof.



An empty mirror and your worst destructive habits,

when they are held up to each other,

that’s when the real making begins.

That’s what art and crafting are.

A tailor needs a torn garment to practice his expertise.

The trunks of trees must be cut and cut again

so they can be used for fine carpentry.

Your doctor must have a broken leg to doctor.

Your defects are the ways that glory gets manifested.

There are two kinds of intelligence: One acquired,

as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts

from books and from what the teacher says,

collecting information from the traditional sciences

as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.

You get ranked ahead or behind others

in regard to your competence in retaining

information. You stroll with this intelligence

in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more

marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one

already completed and preserved inside you.

A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness

in the center of the chest. This other intelligence

does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,

and it doesn't move from outside to inside

through the conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead

from within you, moving out.