POETRY: Rumi - mysticism

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street
and being the noise.
Drink all your passion
and be a disgrace.
Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.
Open your hands,
if you want to be held.
Sit down in this circle.
Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd’s love filling you.
At night, your beloved wanders.
Don’t accept consolations.
Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.
You moan, “She left me.” “He left me.”
Twenty more will come.
Be empty of worrying.
Think who created thought!
Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.



           

When a baby is taken from the wet nurse,

it easily forgets her

and starts eating solid food.

Seeds feed awhile on ground,

then lift up into the sun.

So you should taste the filtered light

and work your way toward wisdom

with no personal covering.

That’s how you came here,
like a star without a name.
Move across the night sky

with those anonymous lights.

When you do things from your soul,

you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

When actions come from another section,

the feeling disappears.

Don't let others lead you.
They may be blind, or worse, vultures.
Reach for the rope of God.
And what is that?

Putting aside self-will.

Because of willfulness people sit in jail.

From willfulness, the trapped birds' wings are tied.

From willfulness, the fish sizzles in the skillet.

The anger of police is willfulness.
You've seen

a magistrate inflict visible punishment.

Now see the invisible.

If you could leave selfishness, you would see

how your soul has been tortured.

We are born and live inside black water in a well.

How could we know what an open field of sunlight is?

Don't insist on going where you think you want to go.

Ask the way to the Spring.

Don’t worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn't matter.
We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.
The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world’s harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.
So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.
This singing-art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.
Poems reach up like the edge of driftwood
along the beach, wanting and wanting!
They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we can’t see.
Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.

 

Don’t go away, come near.

Don’t be faithless, be faithful.

Find the antidote in the venom.

Come to the root of the root of yourself.

Molded of clay, yet kneaded

from the substance of certainty,

a guard at the Treasury of Holy Light –

come, return to the root of the root of your Self.

Once you get hold of selflessness,

You’ll be dragged from your ego

and freed from many traps.

Come, return to the root of the root of your Self.

You are born from the children of God’s creation,

but you have fixed your sight too low.

How can you be happy?

Come, return to the root of the root of your Self.

You were born from a ray of God’s majesty

and have the blessings of a good star.

Why suffer at the hands of things that don’t exist?

Come, return to the root of the root of your Self.

You are a ruby embedded in granite.

How long will you pretend it’s not true?

We can see it in your eyes.

Come to the root of the root of your Self.

You came here from the presence of that fine Friend,

a little drunk, but gentle, stealing our hearts

with that look so full of fire; so,

come, return to the root of the root of your Self.

Our master and host, Shamsi Tabrizi,

has put the eternal cup before you.

Glory be to God, what a rare wine!

So come, return to the root of the root of your Self.