My Favorite Rumi poets !

but known to the English-speaking world simply as Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian, Muslim poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic...

The general theme of Rumi's thought, like that of other mystic and Sufi poets of Persian literature, is essentially that of the concept of tawhid– union with his beloved (the primal root) from which/whom he has been cut off and become aloof – and his longing and desire to restore it..

Rumi believed passionately in the use of music, poetry, and dance as a path for reaching God. For Rumi, music helped devotees to focus their whole being on the divine, and to do this so intensely that the soul was both destroyed and resurrected. It was from these ideas that the practice of "whirling" dervishes developed into a ritual form. His teachings became the base for the order of the Mawlawi which his son Sultan Walad organized. Rumi encouraged ,samāʿ listening to music and turning or doing the sacred dance. In the Mevlevi tradition, samāʿ represents a mystical journey of spiritual ascent through mind and love to the Perfect One. In this journey, the seeker symbolically turns towards the truth, grows through love, abandons the ego, finds the truth, and arrives at the Perfect. The seeker then returns from this spiritual journey, with greater maturity, to love and to be of service to the whole of creation without discrimination with regard to beliefs, races, classes, and nations.

In other verses in the Masnavi, Rumi describes in detail the universal message of love:

The lover’s cause is separate from all other causes

Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries

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You are not your eyes !

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Those who have reached their arms

into emptiness are no longer

concerned with lies and truth,with mind and soul,

or which side of the bed they rose from.

If you are still struggling

to understand, you are not there.

You offer your soul

to one who says, “Take it to the other side.”

You’re on neither side,yet those who love you see you on one side

or the other. You say Illa, “only God,”

then your hungry eyes see you’re in “nothing,” La You’re an artist

who paints both with existence and non.

Shams could help you see who you are,

but remember, You are not your eyes.

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Conversation with a embryo

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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.

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Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?

I cannot stop asking.

If I could taste one sip of an answer,

I could break out of this prison for drunks.

I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.

Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home.

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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.

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I died as a mineral and became a plant,

I died as plant and rose to animal,

I died as animal and I was Man.

Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?

Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar

With angels bless'd; but even from angelhood

I must pass on: all except God doth perish.

When I have sacrificed my angel-soul,

I shall become what no mind e'er conceived.

Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence

Proclaims in organ tones,

To Him we shall return.

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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.

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Come, come, whoever you are.

Wanderer, worshipper, lover of living, it doesn't matter

Ours is not a caravan of despair.

Come even if you have broken your vow a thousand times,

Come, yet again, come, come.

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If an ant seeks the rank of Solomon,

don't smile contemptuously upon its quest.

Everything you possess of skill, and wealth and handicraft,

wasn't it first merely a thought and a quest?

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I don't know where I am.
At times I plunge
to the bottom of the sea,
at times, rise up
like the Sun.

At times, the universe is pregnant by me,
at times I give birth to it.

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and a closing quote ...

The branch might seem like the fruit's origin:
In fact, the branch exist because of the fruit.

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Rumi