diff --git a/rumi.txt b/rumi.txt index 66be7f5..f1ea004 100644 --- a/rumi.txt +++ b/rumi.txt @@ -153,19 +153,7 @@ Of visitors, the fairest. For occupation, this: The spreading wide my narrow hands To gather paradise. -She’s describing the opening air around Rumi and -Shams, their retreat house full of sky and breath, and -laughter with the fairest visitors. Love with no object, conver- -sation with no subject, seeing with no image, light on light, -pure possibility. -Rumi’s love poems are not in the realm we’re more -familiar with, the earthy and sexual transcendence cele- -brated in the poetry of Keats and Whitman, Rexroth, -Kinnell, Bly, Creeley, Jack Gilbert. Rumi’s love is beyond -the sexual pathway and, for that reason, maybe not so -beautiful, to us. Rumi is less tranced and less sensual than, -say, these lines from Rexroth’s late afternoon love poem, -“When We with Sappho”: + Stop reading. Lean back. Give me your mouth. Your grace is as beautiful as a sleep. @@ -312,33 +300,7 @@ and carefully. Only God knows what they say. They use unsayable words. Bird language. But some people have imitated them, learned a few birdcalls, and gotten prestigious. -The Superabundance of -Ordinary Being -Love is not love that doesn’t love the details of the beloved, -the minute particulars. Judith and I were in Pammukkalle, -Turkey, an ancient Roman bath with a museum, and around -the side, attached to it, is a shed called the Museum of -Small Findings. Shards of pottery, coins, fingers and toes of -statuary, just as the sign says. The guard at the door, the -host, is a smiling, genial man about four-feet two-inches -tall, no taller, and no pun intended. Wherever we go now -we do small findings, to make sure nothing goes unnoticed, -or gets left behind. -Love is the connection with spirit, and one way it flows -is through form. That’s the state of rapture Rumi praises, -the joy of being inside an intersection with the divine, -which is what this world is. -“Truly being here is glorious,” says Rilke in the Seventh -Duino Elegy, and in the Ninth, -Isn’t it the secret intent -of this taciturn earth, when it forces lovers together, -that inside their boundless emotion all things may -shudder with joy? -This resonant trembling of the earth with lovers, is the -superabundance of being, a phrase from Rilke in Stephen -Mitchell’s translation. -Rumi walks the granary amazed like an ant, small find- -ings the given. + ZULEIKHA Zuleikha let everything be the name of Joseph, from celery seed to aloes wood. She loved him @@ -617,19 +579,6 @@ no one reasonable, religious jargon forgotten, and Saladin there raising his hand to bid on the bedraggled boy Joseph! -Escaping into Silence -Close the language-door (the mouth). Open the love-win- -dow (the eyes). The moon (the reflected light of the -divine) won’t use the door, only the window. Moving into -silence with a friend, and with what comes through the -eyes and both presences then, we may become those -escapees Rumi calls those who associate in the heart. -Rumi celebrates this wild freedom, and as he does, he -may seem to be subverting scripture with his advocacy of -the nonverbal, but he’s actually trying to make the revela- -tion that comes in language more experiential. I recom- -mend we all try a day of silence with someone. Just one -day! Q U I E T N E S S Inside this new love, die. @@ -879,31 +828,6 @@ the poem again so he can play. There is no end to anything round. - . Grief -The deeper the grief, the more radiant the love. We miss -our friend. Lovers’ tears are the true wealth. My friend John -Seawright used to say that the real tragedy is when you -don’t feel much of anything when someone dies. That lack -of grieving, the feel of not to feel it, is not heard much in -Rumi. -I recently saw Fierce Grace, about Ram Dass’s life and par- -ticularly the stroke. The movie focuses on the use of the -starkest tragedies, not just his, to open the heart and help us -find the vital core of consciousness, the soul. My favorite -part is Ram Dass near the end saying yumyumyumyumyum -when he hears a young woman tell her dream of her lover -who has been murdered in Colombia. Several months after -her lover’s death she has the first dream in which he has -appeared. She yells at him, “Where have you been!” He -says, Listen. The love we had was wonderful, but that is small peanuts -to what’s ahead for you, and when that love comes, I’ll be part of it. -Ram Dass ecstatically tastes the truth of what the dead -lover says. No sticky possessiveness, no hanging on to the -past. Grief opens us to more love, and the new love builds -with the former, and there’s miraculous expansion. It’s a rare -movie that gives off the fragrance of enlightened love. This -one does. - T H E D E A T H O F S A L A D I N You left ground and sky weeping, mind and soul full of grief. @@ -1250,49 +1174,6 @@ not to be resolved. You are not whole or ever complete. You are the wonder without willpower going where you want. - . Absence -Love as a way into God is wild and bewildering. Union! -Absence! What do these words mean? Attar says if you -want to learn the secrets of love that your soul can know, -“You will sacrifice everything. You will lose what you have -considered valuable, but eventually you’ll hear the voice -you’ve most wanted to hear saying, Yes. Come in.” -Another Sufi, Junnaiyd, recommends that we JUMP! -“Plunge headfirst into the ocean of your loving. Then look -around patiently for the pearl that is yours.” This heart- -region is a vast emptiness. Nevit Ergin calls it absence. Rumi -explores the images of a desert night, an empty pot, a -house with a broken door, the weaning of a child, the flute -before breath comes through. When his friend Saladin -dies, Rumi says, The roof of the kingdom within has collapsed, and I -can no longer taste the flavor of my being apart. -Lee Marvin in Paint Your Wagon: “I’m an ex-citizen of -nowhere, and sometimes I get homesick.” At the end of our -loving is a depth of absence that’s tremendously familiar. A -high desert plain. But really there is no end to love’s -unfolding, and no one can tell you how yours should or -will go. The troubadours and Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and -Cleopatra, Anna Karenina, Jude the Obscure, Lorca’s love poems, -Millay’s, they all have wisdom for the various stages of -love’s progress. Rumi, Hafez, and Emily Dickinson have -ideas and images for the annihilation of absence. - -The Infinite a sudden Guest -Has been assumed to be -But how can that stupendous come -Which never went away? -Some people entertain this guest in specific physical -form for a certain amount of time. Be grateful for such a -chance, but remember, everyone has in them the great love -that Rumi’s poetry comes out of. It is the given that never -goes away. -You are an ocean in a drop of dew, -all the universes in a thin sack -of blood! What are these pleasures -then, these joys, these worlds, -that you keep reaching for, hoping -they will make you more alive? - L I K E L I G H T O V E R T H I S P L A I N A moth flying into the flame says with its wingfire, Try this. @@ -1404,119 +1285,6 @@ is one saying, How long before I’m free of this torture! - . Animal Energies -Any love: earth-love, spirit, the way of a man with a maid, -the way of a dog with almost anybody, the way of a hawk -with the wind, of a swan with a pond, of grandparents with -grandchildren, of an ant with a grain of corn, of a lion with -a gazelle, all the natural drawings-together lead eventually -to annihilation. This is the mystery of the animal energies. -Rumi says, astonishingly, “God lives between a human -being and the object of his desire” (Discourse No. ). This -is radical theology to this day, when major crises have -roots in sexual repression—the Catholic pedophile priesty -boys; the Muslim enraged-at-women, dismayed-by-West- -ern-ease-with-impurity vandals. We Americans have our -own deadly-to-life versions of denying the horny animal -energies. We lie a lot. We avoid the intimacy of truth. We -make nice, blind to our own rage. When we start bombing, -we overdo it and never consider the tremendous collateral -damage as another form of terrorism. Very different, but -still a terror. -I like to think of the first mystical poem as that figure -incised, and painted, into the farthest wall of the cave -called Les Trois Freres in southern France. The Animal. -Joseph Campbell called him “god of the cave.” He does the -dance of human and animal at once, owl, lion, horse, stag, -man. He incorporates them all visually and looks out at -you with your own menagerie, who have gone inward far - -enough to meet his gaze. Animals can live inside the land- -scape without our noisy self-consciousness. When we turn -and go with them as Whitman did, we enter a silence and a -transcendence. We perceive through their eyes with their -energies. This is a metaphor, a tremendously important -one, as well as an experience. -Hazrat Inayat Khan says that seekers should “accom- -plish their desires that they may thus be able to rise above -them to the eternal goal.” At the core of each person’s -nature are unique seeds of desiring, which flourish through -the development of personality, not through any suppres- -sion of it. We are not to become pale renunciate ciphers -with no wantings. The animals of desiring, the rooster of -lust, the duck of urgency, the horse of passion, the peacock -of wanting recognition, the crow of acquiring things, the -lion of majesty, the zebra of absence (I made that one up), -these are not to be thwarted but lived, transmuted, and -incorporated. This is the art of forming a personality. Only -when we live the animal powers do we learn that those satis- -factions are not what we truly wanted. There’s more, and -we are here to follow the mysteries of longing beyond -where they lead. The purpose of desire is to perfect the long- -ings, for at the core of longing is the Friend, Christ, -Krishna, the emptiness, wherever it was that Igjargajuk, the -Eskimo shaman, was when he came back from forty nights -on the ice floes with one sentence, “There is nothing to -fear in the universe.” The great love at the center of long- -ing has no fear in it. -There is a witness who watches the obstreperous play -of flame and eros and says, This is the dance of existence. A -great mutual embrace is always happening between the -eternal and what dies, between essence and accident. We -are all writing the book of love. Everything goes in. All the - -particles of the world are in love and looking for lovers. -Pieces of straw tremble in the presence of amber. Isn’t that -the deal? We’re here to love each other, to deepen and -unfold that capacity, to open the heart. And that means liv- -ing in the witness, I’m beginning to see. -Hearing Rumi’s poetry helps. He would say, though, -that poetry can be dangerous, especially beautiful poetry, -because it gives the illusion of having had the experience -without actually going through it. He would periodically -swear off the stuff. No more God poems, I want the pres- -ence. No more love poems, I want to be love. -This region of animal energies is where sexuality enters -love’s book most obviously, although eros, as Freud -showed, is a powerful ingredient in many motions that -draw us. Sex is as basic and nourishing to human beings as -baking bread. Rumi implies as much in the heroic simile of -the breadmaking poem. Lovemaking is going on every- -where among the forms, and in a startling variation of the -golden rule he says, Remember, the way you make love is the way -God will be with you. -Once in an informal moment (there were many) talking -to a young couple about their love life, my teacher spoke -to the young man, “You have seen the bull, how he goes -and licks the cow before he mounts her. This is good. We -can learn much from the animals.” With me he counseled -not cunnilingus so much as restraint. It always tickled him -that my name was Barks. “The dog of desire,” he would -begin, “we can learn from that one, but we must not let him -lead us all over town, pulling to sniff a piece of garbage, to -a place where another dog has urinated, then to roll on a -dead fish. He will drag us around like this if we let him; he -will take over our lives. We must discipline this dog and -sometimes tie him up in the backyard and give him only - -scraps.” He had my number. Do not neglect the licking, though, -is still my bullish theme. -Interesting in this regard are the names that Bawa -Muhaiyaddeen had for three illusion-making capacities of -human sexuality: Suran, the enjoyment of the images that -come to one’s mind at the moment of orgasm. Singhan, the -arrogance experienced in that same moment, associated -with karma and with the qualities of the lion. Tarahan, the -pathway of attraction that leads to the sexual act; it is asso- -ciated with the birth canal or vagina. The three powers are -thought of as sons of Maya. It is fascinating that there are -these ancient Tamil words for mental processes we have -barely noticed in the West, the first two, at least. -Note. The reference above to “priesty boys” and “Mus- -lim vandals” is very un-Bawa. Snide, divisive, pleased-with- -its-clever-self remarks will probably not help bring us into -one loving family. - Think that you’re gliding out from the face of a cliff like an eagle. Think you’re walking like a tiger walks by himself in the forest. @@ -1855,50 +1623,6 @@ People who repress desires often turn, suddenly, into hypocrites. - . Love’s Secret -Rumi makes preposterous claims. One of the most startling -is, “Our loving is the way God’s secret gets told!” 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. Sufis -say the genesis of lovers meeting is God’s sweetest secret. -A saying of Muhammad is, Human awareness is my secret -and I am its secret. The inner knowledge of spirit-essence is the secret -within the secret. I have placed this knowing within the heart of my -true servant, and no one can know his state but I. The knowing of -essence is love’s secret. -There is a truth that comes with following the ener- -gies, and there is a love, a truth-knowing essence, in the -innermost heart. Rumi tries to lead us into this region that -never fades and has no limits, that comes when we recog- -nize that everyone is as precious as our own children and -grandchildren. Bawa was clear with me that I needed to -move beyond blood ties. Having children opened my heart, -but he saw that I need to include everyone in my family. He -so beautifully saw every human being he came in contact -with as kin. My love you, my children, grandchildren, brothers, sis- -ters, mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, great-grandchildren. Every dis- -course began and ended with a declaration of the family -connection. -Some may dismiss this as one-world, peacenik senti- -mentality. I’m not advocating we disband the armies yet, or - -even the churches, though that’s tempting to say. It’s good -to have sanctuaries and singing and silence and Wednes- -day night prayer. We need more sacred space outdoors, -though, fewer enclosed places, and please let’s quit killing -each other over books! Let’s move on to killing each other -over bluegrass and salad oil and circumcision and predesti- -nation and foreplay and whose uncle is the right line, -where the prepositions go, and what happens after we die. -Those are worth fighting for. The book thing is just getting -really old. -Bawa Muhaiyaddeen says, -Do not ever fight or argue, because for God there are no -fights and no arguments. For that One everything is love; -everything is in the form of love, compassion, and truth. May -God provide you with the blessings and grace to live in that -state. - C L O S E TO B E I N G T R U E How can we know the divine qualities from within? If we know only @@ -1978,31 +1702,6 @@ in the pomegranate flowers. If you do not come, these do not matter. If you do come, these do not matter. - . Love’s Discipline -Rumi says an ecstatic human being is a polished mirror that -cannot help reflecting. What we love, we are. As the heart -comes cleaner, we see the kingdom as it is. We become -reflected light. The polishing may be related to practices, a -devotion we do every day that is an emptying out. Or it -may be that when we live in the soul, everything can be -used for clarity. Muhammad once said, “People who insult -me are only polishing the mirror.” I can’t say precisely what -polishing the mirror of the heart means, but I feel it happening -slowly, and it does seem to be related to discipline, by -which I mean intentionally giving time to what Rumi calls -the jeweled inner life, which could be just the witness watching -the mind. -In another passage Rumi says the polishing is done by -the intensity of our longings. It is so difficult to remember -who we are and to act from there. Various remembrance -habits are helpful. Zikr, five-times prayer, a walk at sunset, -twenty minutes of meditation. Stonework, singing, poetry. -Find practices that are specifically yours. There comes then -a creativeness at the end of the polishing that Rumi calls -“looking into the creek.” It’s as though seeing becomes -lucid dreaming. We watch the play of soul creatures. The -gates of light swing open. We look in. - W H O M A K E S Who makes these changes? I shoot an arrow right. It lands left. @@ -2211,31 +1910,6 @@ and separate beings too, as the polisher melts in the mirror’s face. - . Shift from Romance to Friendship -The story of the king, the handmaiden, and the doctor is of -the movement from the erotic love of romance to the love -of a meeting with the Friend, which is the mystery of this -region. Rumi says that however we try to explain this new -place, the explanation sounds embarrassing. -Some commentary clarifies, but with love -silence is clearer. A pen goes -scribbling along, but when it tries to write -love, it breaks! If you want to expound -on love, take your intellect out -and let it lie down in the mud. -As Shakespeare changed the verb to be forever, Rumi -changed the noun friend, dost in Farsi. A meeting takes place -that translates inner life into outer and outer to inner. The -sohbet of Friendship is “the way messengers from the mystery -talk to us.” Call it Holy Spirit, Khidr, Buddha-mind, Friend, -Beloved, or Lord, there’s a shift from the romantic ache, which -is a love dis-ease, to an encounter with “a person like the -dawn,” whose face loosens the knot of intellectual discourse. -This Friendship breaks through the stalled-limbo of desire -to become a reckoning (the astrolabe image) “that sights -into the mysteries of God.” Love changes from the exciting -synapse of relationship to a condition of being, the truest health. - B U R N T K A B O B Last year, I admired the wines. This, I’m wandering inside the red world. @@ -2614,51 +2288,7 @@ If you want to be more alive, love is the truest health. - . Union -The intensest, the most poignant cry comes from one who -has known the union and lost it. Rumi says, Give me his -longing! -I have seen one living in the state of union, at least -one. They may exist in various guises all around us. Bawa -Muhaiyaddeen was totally present in each moment and -so attentive to every detail, the tiniest bit of outer onion- -skin left on a chopped bit, and also he felt with each -breath the divine presence flowing through him. It was -exhilarating to be there where he sat on his bed in -Philadelphia, like breathing the ozone near a waterfall. -He answered questions and listened to stories of what -happened to people during their days. He laughed and -tended business matters. He supervised the cooking of -lunch, did the measuring and pouring in of spices. -Rumi says lovers are those who may seem to be judi- -ciously considering very troubling matters, the world situa- -tion, relationship difficulties, “but really they’re leaning -back riding in a wagon on the Bukhara road, soul beauty -their only expertise.” That’s the way it felt in Bawa’s room. -He was the most loving person I’ve ever met, and he had -much to say about the innermost heart, the qalb. He lived -there. He called it a house with ninety-nine windows (the -qualities of God), a sanctuary, a flowering plenitude, a -benevolence, a piece of flesh that does not die, the kaaba of - -the true pilgrimage, and source of the light that is the ruh, -the soul. He also held that human beings cannot, and must -not, judge one another’s innermost heart. Only divine wis- -dom can do that. -The heart cannot be talked about. We must experience -its depths in that mysterious osmosis of presence with pres- -ence. Hazrat Inayat Khan says that our purpose here is to -make God a reality, a daunting and a potentially unbalanc- -ing task. One can get too full in the ecstatic state. Rumi -warns that the roof is a dangerous place to drink wine. We -can die trying to make God a reality. If we don’t fall from -the roof, we wake with a hangover that weakens conscious- -ness. Hangover remorse can be helpful then. The work of -balancing love (enthusiasm) and discipline (practical help- -fulness) is beautifully addressed in the first poem of this -section, the drink of water that is “The Sunrise Ruby.” - -T H E S U N R I S E R U B Y +THE SUNRISE RUBY In the early morning hour, just before dawn, lover and beloved wake to take a drink of water. @@ -3033,7 +2663,7 @@ Dance in your blood. Dance, when you’re perfectly free. All I know of spirit is this love. -YO U R D E F E C T S +YOUR DEFECTS An empty mirror and your worst destructive habits, when they are held up to each other, that’s when the real making begins. @@ -3043,80 +2673,8 @@ 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. - - . Meditation Pavane -This was my dream of August , . I am a book in -three parts. The first and last have generic, ineffable desig- -nations, the beginning-less beginning and the endless end. The -middle part where (who) I am has an odd name that I see -spelled out in capitals, MEDITATION PAVANE. Awake, I -record the dream and think I have seen the word pavane -before, though I don’t know what it means, some kind of -music? I look it up in the dictionary. “A grave and stately -dance performed by couples in elaborate clothing, of -Spanish and Italian origin, – th century.” A Mediter- -ranean courtship dance, with a circle of elders observing. -The word derives from a colloquial name for Padua and is -related by folk etymology to the French pavaner, meaning -to strut like a peacock. So a meditation pavane mixes the -internal quiet of meditation with the social display of -courtship. -There is a rare English word pavonine, meaning peacock- -like or having the iridescence of their slender necks and the -wide-open eyes on the tail feathers. Street pigeons some- -times have pavonine rings around their necks. I go to the -Internet to search for pavane. The third item down has two -familiar names, Barry and Shelley Phillips, friends of a -friend, whom I will soon meet and do a bookstore Rumi -reading with in Santa Cruz (October ). They are -musicians specializing in Appalachian, Shaker, and Celtic - -melodies. Shelley has a CD called Pavane. Gourd Music is -their label! I have published a volume of my own poetry, -Gourd Seed ( ). I used to grow gourds. -The connections are clear. I call them to arrange some -sound-studio time during my visit to Santa Cruz. That ses- -sion turns into a CD, which we call What Was Said to the -Rose, and also a concert in Santa Cruz (April ). The -dance of courtship energies moving with the inner motions -of meditation, let’s say that mystery is the station of love -explored in this section. The close-in irritation and excite- -ment of the erotic, stepping with the cleansing of going-in. -The way we are led by dreams has been extremely -important in my life. I have told the story elsewhere, sev- -eral times, how I met my teacher in a dream on May , - . I’ll tell it again: In my dream I am sleeping on the -bluff above the Tennessee River five miles north of Chat- -tanooga where I grew up. I wake up inside the dream, -though still asleep. A ball of light rises off Williams Island -and comes over me. It clarifies from the inside out and -reveals a man sitting cross-legged with a white shawl over -his head, which is bowed. He lifts his head and opens his -eyes. “I love you,” he says. “I love you too,” I answer. The -landscape, my first deep love, the curve of that river and -the island, feels soaked with love, which is also just the -ordinary dew forming in the night. I feel the process of the -dew as a mixing of love with world-matter. That was the -dream, and the only credential I have for working with -Rumi’s poetry. When I met the teacher in the dream, Bawa -Muhaiyaddeen, a year and a half later in September of - , he told me to continue the work on Rumi. “It has to -be done.” Bawa died on December , . I used to visit -the Fellowship in Philadelphia several times a year for three -or four days, over those nine years. He never asked for - -money in exchange for the wisdom he gave so generously. -The curry was free too. Food truly does taste better when -it’s made by an enlightened being. -So let’s have tea and look out at the cold sea. If you -want one of these CDs that Barry and Shelley Phillips and I -made (Irish, Appalachian, Shaker, and improvised music: -cello, English horn, Irish harp, flute, with myself speaking -Rumi poems, most of which are included in this volume), -I’ll send you one free. Call - - . Leave your name -and address. - -R U L E S A B O U T R E S T R A I N T + +RULES ABOUT RESTRAINT There is nourishment like bread that feeds one part of your life and nourishment like light for another. @@ -3126,7 +2684,7 @@ for the latter, Never be satisfied. Eat and drink the soul substance, as a wick does with the oil it soaks in. Give light to the company. -T H E C O M PA N Y O F L O V E R S +THE COMPANY OF LOVERS The rule that covers everything is: How you are with others, expect that back. If you want to know God, enjoy the company @@ -3264,26 +2822,6 @@ Don’t try to see through the distances. That’s not for human beings. Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move. - . One Stroke Down -We sense an impending danger in ecstatic love, that the -experience will change us radically. And it’s true. The -love-thief steals the keys to our favorite rooms, steals our -half-loves. Ayaz crushes the pearl. There is a destructive -downstroke when soul-love enters. The physical pearl and -its value disintegrate to powder in the presence of the -king. Tremendous courage and abandon come with Ayaz’s -act. The courtiers feel it and prostrate themselves, hoping -for grace. -The progress in a story of Rumi’s is toward a moment -when consciousness breaks open and the Friendship is felt -here and now. The ocean of wisdom becomes this weather we -walk. Something like a jump occurs (though it may not be -anything we do), and life is wildly different. You’re naked -and cold. Hallaj says to dive in the river and get the fur -coat that is floating by. You plunge in, and it’s a live bear! -There’s the moment, a gamble one doesn’t know or care -how it will turn out. This bear is going to wear you home. - Lightning, your presence from ground to sky. No one knows what becomes of me, @@ -3429,44 +2967,6 @@ has decided to wear me home!” A little part of a story, a hint. Do you need long sermons on Hallaj? - . Love’s Excess -Someone asked once, “What is love?” -“Be lost in me,” I said. “You’ll know love when that happens.” -Love has no calculating in it. That’s why it’s said to be a qual- -ity of God and not of human beings. God loves you is the -only possible sentence. The subject becomes the object so -totally that it can’t be turned around. Who will the you pro- -noun stand for if you say, “You love God”? -Prose Preface to Book II of the Masnavi -I, you, he, she, we, -in the garden of mystic lovers, -these are not true -distinctions. -SHAMS TABRIZ -The extravagant perspective of Rumi’s life and work is that -there is a core of understanding and that that core is love, -the heart. Saint Augustine talks about “the supersensual -eye of the soul.” The eighteenth-century mystic Emanuel -Swedenborg says there is a light that illuminates the mind -that is different from sunlight, and that is what the word -enlightenment refers to. Those who experience these other -sights and other hearings are often in a state of untranslat- -able joy that almost dissolves them with its delight. - -It would be strange if poetry written from such know- -ing were not excessive. Being in the spirit is not a casual -thing. Each ant is given its elegant belt at birth. This love we feel -pours through us like giveaway song. -It’s not true, though, to say that Rumi’s poetry always -comes from a trance state. An enlightened being is most -often very focused, present in the moment, and fiercely -practical, even when saying the most mystical things. “You -have to understand the form of the body in order to under- -stand the meaning of the light form within it.” -And Rumi’s knowing, like his father Bahauddin’s, has -many valences, which certainly includes the hulul, or mysti- -cal trance. - T H E S O U R C E O F J OY No one knows what makes the soul wake up so happy! Maybe a dawn breeze @@ -3573,24 +3073,6 @@ Only love. Only the holder the flag fits into, no flag. - . Love’s Bewilderment -Love loves flowing, a beyond-containment of blood and -semen, wine and riverwater, amniotic fluid and the round -bead of dew forming. -Flowering. Love cannot be held long within categories, -likewise the poetry celebrating love. You might say that -love loves confusion and not be far wrong. Love is meta- -morphosis, rapid and radical, agile, full of vigor and levity. -Love is the continuous alchemy of regions overlapping: -animal, angelic, human, and the luminosity of the true -human beings, their compassion and their cooking. None -of this is sayable. It can only be lived. Rumi says, Stay bewil- -dered in God, and only that. But the mind keeps questioning, -turning away, I don’t think so. There is strong resistance and -fear and academic distancing in the rational precincts, -which tend to mistrust any boundary-dissolving, beauty- -relishing, ecstatic honesty. - God only knows, I don’t, what keeps me laughing. The stem of a flower @@ -3778,48 +3260,7 @@ and because something I swallowed in the ocean has made me completely content with ignorance. - - . Lord of the Heart -Love is our aloneness with the lord of such beauty and -depth that we’re not lonely. The empty space of the guest -house, not the guests moving through, the host and theater -where mind and desire play out their myriad motions. As -say Shakespeare is the great globe itself, not the players, nor -the drowned book, not the jealous lover or the eloquently -introspective athlete or the rugged king, who calls himself -“old and foolish,” rather the space those inhabit and the -source. This love-region called lord is not imagination. This -emptiness so dazzlingly full of emanation is what gnostics -call the pleroma. Niffari calls it Ignorance. Someone else, the -cloud of unknowing. -Words do not approach it hence the edge of self-satire -that word-mystics barely keep in check. This is the one we -know early on in life and come back to late. Riverlord, direc- -tor of dreams, the company that most nourishes our soul, -this is the great love we’re given and feel bearing us along. -It’s not fair to speak as though this were everyone’s -experience, because it isn’t, and I do honor the pained -vision, the bitter childhoods, the broken trust. Rumi -focuses not so much on the nobility of suffering or its -heartbreaking howl as on the ultimate expansion into mys- -tery that this poetry tries to say. It began with the Friend- -ship with Shams Tabriz. It is still unfolding, and as many of -the poems imply, the unfolding is intimately woven in with -seeing. John Ruskin says, - -The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to -see something and tell what he saw in a plain way. To see -clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion all in one. -Bawa says something very similar. -Everything you see tells the story of God. Look at it. God is -out spread, filling the entire universe. So look. You exist in a -form. God is without form. You are the visible example, the -sun. God is the light within the sun. -I am so small I can barely be seen. -How can this great love be inside me? -Look at your eyes. They are small, -but they see enormous things. - + E Y E S What is it that sees when vision is clear? The core that has no story, has that ever seen anything?