Be a lamp,
a lifeboat, a ladder.
Help someone’s soul heal.
Walk out of your house
like a shepherd.
Posts Tagged → rumi
the lame goat finds herself in front
Thought of worldly things
is an enemy to the sweetness of spiritual
consciousness. Silence your thoughts. Bewilder
yourself with God. Your mind will fall away
and your heart will open.
Forwardness in worldly
ways is backwardness in reality.
When the herd turns back toward God,
its leaders end up in the rear! The lame goat
that was hindmost finds herself in front, and the
ones who worried about her are ecstatic now.
How do saints and prophets get to
be that way? By breaking
their own legs.
They make themselves
lame by renouncing expertise in
the ways of the world. Understanding that
it’s not the way home, they wash their hearts clean
of such knowledge. If you want to reach heaven,
follow the branches that lead to that root.
Be the lame goat here, and
lead the herd home.
work the soul with discipline
please help support blue dragon
Borrow the beloved’s eyes
Look through them and you’ll see the beloved’s face
everywhere. No tiredness, no jaded boredom.
“I shall be your eye and your hand and your loving.”
Let that happen, and things
you have hated will become helpers.
A certain preacher always prays long and with enthusiasm
for thieves and muggers that attack people
on the street. “Let your mercy, O Lord,
cover their insolence.”
He doesn’t pray for the good,
but only for the blatantly cruel.
Why is this? his congregation asks.
“Because they have done me such generous favors.
Every time I turn back toward the things they want.
I run into them, they beat me, and leave me nearly dead
in the road, and I understand, again, that what they want
is not what I want. They keep me on the spiritual path.
That’s why I honor them, and pray for them.”
Those that make you return, for whatever reason,
to God’s solitude, be grateful to them.
Worry about the others, who give you
delicious comforts that keep you from prayer.
Friends are enemies sometimes,
and enemies friends.
There is an animal called an ushghur, a porcupine
If you hit it with a stick, it extends its quills
and gets bigger. The soul is a porcupine,
made strong by stick-beating.
So a prophet’s soul is especially afflicted,
because it has to become so powerful.
A hide is soaked in tanning liquor and becomes leather.
If the tanner did not rub in the acid,
the hide would get foul-smelling and rotten.
The soul is a newly skinned hide, bloody and gross.
Work it with manual discipline,
and the bitter tanning acid of grief,
and you’ll become lovely, and very strong.
If you can’t do this work yourself, don’t worry.
You don’t even have to make a decision,
one way or another. The Friend, who knows
a lot more than you do, will bring difficulties,
and grief, and sickness,
as medicine, as happiness,
as the essence of the moment when you’re beaten,
when you hear Checkmate, and can finally say,
with Hallaj’s voice,
I trust you to kill me.
you’re not who you think you are
Gently I weep for my mind,
caught in its illusion of ownership.
Mind, you’re not who you think you are.
You’re dancing over a pit. Soon you’ll fall through,
and these things you’ve valued and collected will
be left behind. My sweet dear, do you
understand this, and if you do,
how does your food
taste?
remember you are inside the presence
Whatever state you’re in,
remember you are inside the presence.
Out looking for pleasure, there especially —
I have found no delight better than the mix of touch
with love. That taste is the sweetest. When you are tranced
in that, recall who gave you these pleasurable forms and
inclinations. Even when having a brain seizure,
remember how earthquake energy pries
apart mountains and zigzags a stone
wall. Let that core-energy break
your convulsion.
When you’re afraid
of a certain man in power, of some
authority binding you, in these anxieties,
as well as in prostration prayer,
taste the presence.