β
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.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
What you seek is seeking you.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Donβt grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (The Illuminated Rumi)
β
Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (The Essential Rumi)
β
If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Knock, And He'll open the door
Vanish, And He'll make you shine like the sun
Fall, And He'll raise you to the heavens
Become nothing, And He'll turn you into everything.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.
Praise God for those two insomnias!
And the difference between them.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
silence is the language of god,
all else is poor translation.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (Masnavi i Man'avi, the spiritual couplets of Maula)
β
In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.
You feel it, don't you?
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Travel brings power and love back into your life.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!
Why do you stay in prison
When the door is so wide open?
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (The Essential Rumi (Mystical Classics of the World))
β
I know you're tired but come, this is the way.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
I want to see you.
Know your voice.
Recognize you when you
first come 'round the corner.
Sense your scent when I come
into a room you've just left.
Know the lift of your heel,
the glide of your foot.
Become familiar with the way
you purse your lips
then let them part,
just the slightest bit,
when I lean in to your space
and kiss you.
I want to know the joy
of how you whisper
"more
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (Words of Paradise: Selected Poems of Rumi)
β
We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Two there are who are never satisfied -- the lover of the world and the lover of knowledge.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (Ω
Ψ«ΩΩΫ Ω
ΨΉΩΩΫ)
β
This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Be melting snow.
Wash yourself of yourself.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (The Essential Rumi)
β
Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others' faults. Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the Earth for modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you appear.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Respond to every call
that excites your spirit.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (The Essential Rumi)
β
I have lived on the lip
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I've been knocking from the inside.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Take someone who doesn't keep score,
who's not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing,
who has not the slightest interest even
in his own personality: he's free.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Sit, be still, and listen,
because you're drunk
and we're at
the edge of the roof.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Either give me more wine or leave me alone.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again , come , come.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
People want you to be happy.
Don't keep serving them your pain!
If you could untie your wings
and free your soul of jealousy,
you and everyone around you
would fly up like doves.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
The cure for pain is in the pain.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Start a huge, foolish project, like Noahβ¦it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Reason is powerless in the expression of Love.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
But listen to me. For one moment
quit being sad. Hear blessings
dropping their blossoms
around you.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (The Essential Rumi)
β
When you go through a hard period,
When everything seems to oppose you,
... When you feel you cannot even bear one more minute,
NEVER GIVE UP!
Because it is the time and place that the course will divert!
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (The Essential Rumi)
β
A mountain keeps an echo deep inside. That's how I hold your voice.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor...Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
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.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Who could be so lucky? Who comes to a lake for water and sees the reflection of moon.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
If you desire healing,
let yourself fall ill
let yourself fall ill.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Study me as much as you like, you will not know me, for I differ in a hundred ways from what you see me to be. Put yourself behind my eyes and see me as I see myself, for I have chosen to dwell in a place you cannot see.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
You wander from room to room
Hunting for the diamond necklace
That is already around your neck!
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
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.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
You are the universe in ecstatic motion.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Oh soul,
you worry too much.
You have seen your own strength.
You have seen your own beauty.
You have seen your golden wings.
Of anything less,
why do you worry?
You are in truth
the soul, of the soul, of the soul.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
My heart is so small
it's almost invisible.
How can You place
such big sorrows in it?
"Look," He answered,
"your eyes are even smaller,
yet they behold the world.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Run from what's comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I'll be mad.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Only from the heart can you touch the sky.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
I was dead, then alive.
Weeping, then laughing.
The power of love came into me,
and I became fierce like a lion,
then tender like the evening star.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you
Don't go back to sleep!
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth
across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,
The door is round and open
Don't go back to sleep!
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
In Silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Do you know what you are?
You are a manuscript oΖ a divine letter.
You are a mirror reflecting a noble face.
This universe is not outside of you.
Look inside yourself;
everything that you want,
you are already that.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (Hush, Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi)
β
You were born with potential.
You were born with goodness and trust. You were born with ideals and dreams. You were born with greatness.
You were born with wings.
You are not meant for crawling, so don't.
You have wings.
Learn to use them and fly.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
You think because you understand 'one' you must also understand 'two', because one and one make two. But you must also understand 'and'.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
The moon stays bright when it doesn't avoid the night.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Like a sculptor, if necessary,
carve a friend out of stone.
Realize that your inner sight is blind
and try to see a treasure in everyone.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
I choose to love you in silenceβ¦
For in silence I find no rejection,
I choose to love you in lonelinessβ¦
For in loneliness no one owns you but me,
I choose to adore you from a distanceβ¦
For distance will shield me from pain,
I choose to kiss you in the windβ¦
For the wind is gentler than my lips,
I choose to hold you in my dreamsβ¦
For in my dreams, you have no end.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Beauty surrounds us.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites so that you will have two wings to fly, not one
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (The Essential Rumi)
β
Here is a relationship booster
that is guaranteed to
work:
Every time your spouse or lover says something stupid
make your eyes light up as if you
just heard something
brilliant.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
At night, I open the window
and ask the moon to come
and press its face against mine.
Breathe into me.
Close the language-door
and open the love-window.
The moon won't use the door,
only the window.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings)
β
Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon;
How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (The Essential Rumi)
β
Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (The Essential Rumi)
β
Inside you thereβs an artist you donβt know aboutβ¦ say yes quickly, if you know, if youβve known it from before the beginning of the universe.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (The Essential Rumi)
β
You try to be faithful
And sometimes you're cruel.
You are mine. Then, you leave.
Without you, I can't cope.
And when you take the lead,
I become your footstep.
Your absence leaves a void.
Without you, I can't cope.
You have disturbed my sleep,
You have wrecked my image.
You have set me apart.
Without you, I can't cope.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (Love: The Joy That Wounds: The Love Poems of Rumi)
β
An eye is meant to see things.
The soul is here for its own joy.
A head has one use: For loving a true love.
Feet: To chase after.
Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind,
for learning what men have done and tried to do.
Mysteries are not to be solved: The eye goes blind
when it only wants to see why.
A lover is always accused of something.
But when he finds his love, whatever was lost
in the looking comes back completely changed.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (Night and Sleep)
β
I look at the blanked-out faces of the other passengers--hoisting their briefcases, their backpacks, shuffling to disembark--and I think of what Hobie said: beauty alters the grain of reality. And I keep thinking too of the more conventional wisdom: namely, that the pursuit of pure beauty is a trap, a fast track to bitterness and sorrow, that beauty has to be wedded to something more meaningful.
Only what is that thing? Why am I made the way I am? Why do I care about all the wrong things, and nothing at all for the right ones? Or, to tip it another way: how can I see so clearly that everything I love or care about is illusion, and yet--for me, anyway--all that's worth living for lies in that charm?
A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don't get to choose our own hearts. We can't make ourselves want what's good for us or what's good for other people. We don't get to choose the people we are.
Because--isn't it drilled into us constantly, from childhood on, an unquestioned platitude in the culture--? From William Blake to Lady Gaga, from Rousseau to Rumi to Tosca to Mister Rogers, it's a curiously uniform message, accepted from high to low: when in doubt, what to do? How do we know what's right for us? Every shrink, every career counselor, every Disney princess knows the answer: "Be yourself." "Follow your heart."
Only here's what I really, really want someone to explain to me. What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can't be trusted--? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight toward a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster?...If your deepest self is singing and coaxing you straight toward the bonfire, is it better to turn away? Stop your ears with wax? Ignore all the perverse glory your heart is screaming at you? Set yourself on the course that will lead you dutifully towards the norm, reasonable hours and regular medical check-ups, stable relationships and steady career advancement the New York Times and brunch on Sunday, all with the promise of being somehow a better person? Or...is it better to throw yourself head first and laughing into the holy rage calling your name?
β
β
Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch)