MEVLANA JELALUDDIN RUMI 

He is one of the treasures of Islam/Humanity/Universe 

Here is one way he described himself ;

My Mother is Love 
My Father is Love 
My Prophet is Love
My God is Love 
I am a child of Love
I have come only to speak of Love

Here are some of his words ;

Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,
if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.
***

Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence

***
The children follow,
not knowing the taste of wine, or how
his drunkness feels. All people on this planet
are children, except for a very few.
No one is grown up except those free of desire.

***
If you haven't left child's play,
how can you be an adult?
Without purity of spirit,
if you are still in the middle of lust and greed
and other wantings, you're like children
playing at sexual intercourse.
They wrestle
and rub together, but it's not sex!

The same with the fightings of mankind.
It's a squabble with play-swords.
No purpose, totally futile.

***
Your actions mean nothing, the sex and war that you do.
***
Experience that breathing.
From books and words come fantasy,
and sometimes, from fantasy comes union.
***
Gone, inner and outer,
no moon, no ground or sky.
***
The wine we really drink is our own blood.
Our bodies ferment in these barrels.
We give everything for a glass of this.
We give our minds for a sip.

***

There are thousands of wines
that can take over our minds.
Don't think all ecstasies
are the same!

***

Every object, every being,
is a jar full of delight.

Be a connoisseur,
and taste with caution.

Any wine will get you high.
Judge like a king, and choose the purest.

***
Thirst drove me down to the water
where I drank the moon's reflection.

***

First, when I was apart from you,
this world did not exist,
nor any other.

Second, whatever I was looking for
was always you.

Third, why did I ever learn to count to three?

***
This is the sema of slavery and mastery
dancing together. This is not being.

Neither words, nor any natural fact
can express this.

***
Sometimes organization
and computation become absurd.

***

Late, by myself, in the boat of myself,
no light and no land anywhere,
cloudcover thick. I try to stay
just above the surface, yet I'm already under
and living within the ocean.

***
Be melting snow.
Wash yourself of yourself.

***
The body is a device to calculate
the astronomy of the spirit.
Look through that astrolabe
and become oceanic.

***

You kiss a beautiful mouth, and a key
turns the lock of your fear.

***
The friend comes into my body
looking for the center, unable
to find it, draws a blade,
strikes anywhere.

***
Do you know what I'm doing?
That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?
As much as a pen knows what it's writing,
or the ball can guess where it's going next.

***
"Since I was cut from the reedbed,
I have made this crying sound.

Anyone apart from someone he loves
understands what I say.

Anyone pulled from a source
longs to go back.

At any gathering I am there,
mingling in the laughing and grieving,

a friend to each, but few
will hear the secrets hidden

within the notes. No ears for that.
Body flowing out of spirit,

spirit up from body: no concealing
that mixing. But it's not given us
to see the soul. The reed flute
is fire, not wind. Be that empty."

***
I have a thirsty fish in me
that can never find enough
of what it's thirsty for!

***
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.

I can explain this, but it would break
the glass cover on your heart,
and there's no fixing that.

***
Are these enough words,
or shall I squeeze more juice from this?
Who am I, my friend?

***
For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.
Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
that work is over.
Free of who I was, free of presence, free of
dangerous fear, hope,
free of mountainous wanting.

The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece
of straw
blown off into emptiness.

***
The mother and father are your attachment
to beliefs and bloodties
and desires and comforting habits.

Don't listen to them!
They seem to protect,
but they imprison.

They are your worst enemies.
They make you afraid
of living in emptiness.

***
When you are with everyone but me,
you're with no one.
When you are with no one but me,
you're with everyone

Instead of being bound up with everyone,
be everyone.
When you become that many, you're nothing.
Empty.

***
A lover's food is the love of bread,
not the bread. No one who really loves,
loves existence.

***
To an Egyptian, the Nile looks bloody.
To an Israelite, clear.
What is a highway to one is a disaster to the other

***
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu,
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion

or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any

origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.

***
Come to the orchid in Spring.
There is light and wine, and sweethearts
in the pomegranate flowers.

If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.

***

Who comes to a spring thirsty
and sees the moon reflected in it?

***
The rest of this poem is too blurry
for them to read.

***
What is form in the presence of reality?
Very feeble. Reality keeps the sky turned over
like a cup above us, revolving. Who turns
the sky wheel? The universal intelligence.

***
Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,
absentminded. Someone sober
will worry about things going badly.
Let the lover be.

***
A night full of talking that hurts,
my worst held-back secrets. Everything
has to do with loving and not loving.
This night will pass.
Then we have work to do.

***
Let yourself be silently drawn
by the stronger pull of what you really love.

***
How to cure bad water? Send it back to the river.
How to cure bad habits? Send me back to you.

***
Pale sunlight,
pale the wall.

Love moves away.
The light changes.

I need more grace
than I thought.

***
We must drown, away from heroism,
and descriptions of heroism.

***
The mystery does not get clearer by repeating the question,
nor is it bought with going to amazing places.

Until you've kept your eyes
and your wanting still for fifty years,
you don't begin to cross over from confusion.

***
What the sayer of praise is really praising is
himself, by saying implicitly,
"My eyes are clear."

Likewise, someone who criticizes is criticizing
himself, saying implicitly, "I can't see very well
with my eyes so inflamed."

Don't ever feel sorry for someone
who wants to be the sun, that other son,
the one that makes rotten things fresh.

And don't ever envy someone
who wants to be this world.

***
Just because you can't drink all that falls
doesn't mean you give up taking sips
of rainwater. If the nut
of the mystery can't be held,
at least let me touch the shell.

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