let your eyes get clear enough

inside the presence

 

Having anxieties and feeling sad

about being alive is like piling black mud

and garbage on your head. The mud slides over

your eyes and the rubbish infects them. You can’t

see and you get sick. Everyone does this at some

time. Try to stop doing it. Let your eyes get

clear enough to see the beauty

around you.

 

O giver of worriedness and grief,

remove me from my being. Give me the peace

of not-being. This prayer, if you can pray it, will wash

the mud off your head. There is a beloved who pours muddy

water over the head of the lover, and there is a lover who

says, I cannot see you with my eyes, but the drops

of muddy water on my eyelashes are filled

with the rose of your face.

 

Bahauddin, father of Rumi

The Drowned Book