You’ve flapped and fluttered against limits long enough.
You’ve been a bird without wings in a house without doors or windows.
Compassion builds a door.
Restlessness cuts a key.
ASK!
Step off
proudly into sunlight,
not looking back.
Take sips of this pure wine being poured.
Don’t mind that you’ve been given a dirty cup.
Learn about your inner self from those who know such things,
but don’t repeat verbatim what they say.
Does a drop stay still in the ocean?
Move with the entirety, and with the tiniest particular.
Be the moisture in an oyster that helps to form one pearl.
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and attend them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture, still,
treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
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.
If you don’t try to fly,
and so break yourself apart,
you will be broken open by death,
when it’s too late for all you could become.
Whatever you lost through fate,
be certain that it saved you from pain.
Be with those who help your being.
Don’t sit with indifferent people, whose breath
comes cold out of their mouths.
Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.
Many of the faults you see in others, dear reader,
are your own nature reflected in them.
A moment of happiness,
you and I sitting on the verandah,
apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.
We feel the flowing water of life here,
you and I, with the garden’s beauty
and the birds singing.
The stars will be watching us,
and we will show them
what it is to be a thin crescent moon.
You and I unselfed, will be together,
indifferent to idle speculation, you and I.
The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
as we laugh together, you and I.
In one form upon this earth,
and in another form in a timeless sweet land. (for Jim)
When you do things from your soul,
you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
When actions come from another section,
the feeling disappears.
Those who don’t feel this love pulling them like a river, those who don’t drink dawn like a cup of spring water or take in sunset like a supper, those who don’t want to change, let them sleep.
When the remedy you have offered only increases the disease, then leave him who will not be cured, and tell your story to someone who seeks the truth.
Everything you possess of skill, and wealth, and handicraft, wasn’t it first merely a thought and a quest?
Let the water settle; you will see the moon and stars mirrored in your being.
Out beyond the ideas of right-doing or wrong-doing there is a field – I’ll meet you there.
RUMI