Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207 – 1273)
Persian philosopher, theologian, poet, teacher, and founder of the Mevlevi order of Sufism; also known as Mevlana, Jalaluddin Rumi, or simply Rumi.
The idol of your self is the mother of all idols.
To regard the self as easy to subdue is a mistake.
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.
The lower self does not want anyone to receive anything from anybody else, and if it is aware of something receiving a special boon, it seeks to destroy it.
Every tree and plant in the meadow seemed to be dancing, those which average eyes would see as fixed and still.
That which God said to the rose,
and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty,
He said to my heart,
and made it a hundred times more beautiful.
There is no reality but God,
says the completely surrendered sheik, who is an ocean for all beings.
This is a gathering of Lovers.
In this gathering
there is no high, no low,
no smart, no ignorant,
no special assembly,
no grand discourse,
no proper schooling required.
There is no master,
no disciple.
This gathering is more like a drunken party,
full of tricksters, fools,
mad men and mad women.
This is a gathering of Lovers.
From Hallaj, I learned to hunt lions, but I became something hungrier than a lion.
Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it.
Whoever has polished it more sees more — more unseen forms become manifest to him.
Love said to me,
there is nothing that is not me.
Be silent.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I will meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about
language, ideas, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.
I don't know where I am.
At times I plunge
to the bottom of the sea,
at times, rise up
like the Sun.
When you see anyone complaining
of such and such a person's ill-nature and bad temper,
know that the complainant is bad-tempered,
forasmuch as he speaks ill of that bad-tempered person,
because he alone is good-tempered who is quietly forbearing
towards the bad-tempered and ill-natured.
Are you fleeing from Love because of a single humiliation?
What do you know of Love except the name?
Love has a hundred forms of pride and disdain,
and is gained by a hundred means of persuasion.
Since Love is loyal, it purchases one who is loyal:
it has no interest in a disloyal companion.
The human being resembles a tree; its root is a covenant with God:
that root must be cherished with all one's might.
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
The lion who breaks the enemy's ranks
is a minor hero
compared to the lion who overcomes himself.
Whatever posessions and objects of its desires the lower self may obtain, it hangs on to them, refusing to let them go out of greed for more, or out of fear of poverty and need.
This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.
I don't plan it.
When I'm outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.
Little by little, wean yourself. This is the gist of what I have to say. From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood, move to an infant drinking milk, to a child on solid food, to a searcher after wisdom, to a hunter of more invisible game.
Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo. You might say, "The world outside is vast and intricate. There are wheatfields and mountain passes, and orchards in bloom. At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding."
You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up in the dark with eyes closed. Listen to the answer.
There is no "other world." I only know what I've experienced. You must be hallucinating.
I want a heart which is split, part by part, because of the pain of separation from God, so that I might explain my longing and complaint to it.