The disciples of Isa ibn Mariyam (AS) came to him and asked;

“O spirit of Allah, is there anyone else like you alive in our time?” He replied: “Yes indeed, Whoever has the dhikr of Allah in his heart,and is silent in thought, and who learns from what is given, surely that one is like me.”


- translated and authenticated by Hazrat Muhammad al-Ghazali

.

i.

can you hear me talking?
can you hear me
screaming, in this
silence that’s pounding inside my
head, pulsing inside my
blood and weakening me,
slowly? can you hear me?
can you
hear

me?


ii.

being around you
only makes the loneliness worse
when you leave.


iii.

‘calm down’,
they tell me.
‘just calm down.’
how?
‘deep breaths.
just take a deep breath.’

except i don’t really
want to breathe
anymore.


iv.

make it go away.
please. just make it go
away.

Amidst the shadows
In the silence of night
The sum of our fears
Materialize…

No sun to warm the skin,
No smile to soothe the soul,
Just shadows of darkness,
The unconscious self wakened…

The façade of confidence,
Slowly fades into the night.
Loneliness the reality,
The mind lost in self doubt.

It weaves insidiously,
Relentless is its power.
In silence our souls hunger,
Fears shrouded in the night.

Tormented by a self portrait,
Exposing flaws and imperfections…
Alone cloaked in shadows,
Battling against self despair…

Vanity yearns for perfection,
The ego craves validation,
The heart aches for love,
And the soul seeks peace…

Our greatest fear,
Loneliness…
The greatest sadness,
We have all known it.

"He who truly knows is the one in whom sound actions, pure supplications, truthfulness and precaution speak out; not his tongue, his debates, his comparisons, assertions or claims"


Imam Jafar Sadiq - Lantern of the Path

Now when I read words, no matter how well conscructed or beautiful, they are still words, there's a discord between recognition of meaning and image that has them dried out and stale by the time my mind has developed a reality that corresponds with their message. I am worded out. I need to be revived by the natural world.

Be Lost

Be Lost in the Call
Lord, said David, since you do not need us,
why did you create these two worlds?

Reality replied: O prisoner of time,
I was a secret treasure of kindness and generosity,
and I wished this treasure to be known,
so I created a mirror: its shining face, the heart;
its darkened back, the world;
The back would please you if you've never seen the face.

Has anyone ever produced a mirror out of mud and straw?
Yet clean away the mud and straw,
and a mirror might be revealed.

Until the juice ferments a while in the cask,
it isn't wine. If you wish your heart to be bright,
you must do a little work.

My King addressed the soul of my flesh:
You return just as you left.
Where are the traces of my gifts?

We know that alchemy transforms copper into gold.
This Sun doesn't want a crown or robe from God's grace.
He is a hat to a hundred bald men,
a covering for ten who were naked.

Jesus sat humbly on the back of an ass, my child!
How could a zephyr ride an ass?
Spirit, find your way, in seeking lowness like a stream.
Reason, tread the path of selflessness into eternity.

Remember God so much that you are forgotten.
Let the caller and the called disappear;
be lost in the Call.

-
"Love is a Stranger", Kabir Helminski
Threshold Books, 1993

Holistic wisdom of Rumi

Whoever is loved is beautiful, but the opposite is not true, that whoever is beautiful is loved. Real beauty is part of loved-ness, and that loved-ness is primary. If a being is loved, he or she has beauty, because a part cannot be separate from the whole. Many girls were more beautiful than Laila, but Majnun did not love them. "Let us bring some of these to meet you," they used to say to Majnun, and he would reply, "It's not the form of Laila that I love. Laila is not the form. You're looking at the cup, whereas I think only of the wine I drink from that cup. If you gave me a chalice studded with gemstones, but filled with vinegar or something other than wine, what use would that be? An old broken dipper-gourd with Laila-wine in it is better than a hundred precious goblets full of other liquid."


Passion is present when a man can distinguish between the wine and the container. Two men see a loaf of bread. One hasn't eaten anything for ten days. The other has eaten five times a day, every day. He sees the shape of the loaf. The other man with his urgent need sees inside into the taste, and into the nourishment the bread could give. Be that hungry, to see within all beings the Friend.


Creatures are cups. The sciences and the arts and all branches of knowledge are inscriptions around the outside of the cups. When a cup shatters, the writing can no longer be read. The wine's the thing! The wine that's held in the mold of these physical cups. Drink the wine and know what lasts and what to love. The man who truly asks must be sure of two things: One, that he's mistaken in what he's doing or thinking now. And two, that there is a wisdom he doesn't know yet. Asking is half of knowing.


Everyone turns toward someone. Look for one scarred by the King's polo stick.


A man or a woman is said to be absorbed when the water has total control of him, and he no control of the water. A swimmer moves around willfully. An absorbed being has no will but the water's going. Any word or act is not really personal, but the way the water has of speaking or doing. As when you hear a voice coming out of a wall, and you know that it's not the wall talking, but someone inside, or perhaps someone outside echoing off the wall. Saints are like that. They've achieved the condition of a wall, or a door.



-Translated by Coleman Barks with A.J. Arberry

"If you come across the gardens of Paradise, then graze therein."

They asked, and what are the gardens of Paradise?

He said

"the groups of dhikr."

Come!

Without You,
I've given up on everyone else.

...

Come!

If I was asleep back then,
I'm staying sleepless right now.
Come O My Soul,
I've become a resident of the Tavern,
Till the Day of Judgment.
I've estranged myself so much
From everyone else,
That I've become a stranger to myself.

Come!

O Seeker of the World's mysteries.
Look at me:
I've become the mysteries myself.

Come!

I've already gone insane for Your Love.
If I was a flourishing town back then,
I'm nothing but ruins right now.
For Your Love,
I've even given up
On my family and households.
Out of pain of Your Love,
I've even moved in with the pain itself.
When I saw my soul
Becoming One with Your Soul,
I even became a stranger
To my very own loved ones.
I used to talk days and nights
About how Love being
simply a Myth.
Now out of Your Love,
I've become a Myth myself.


Rumi.