One view of identity is that it’s a structure made of what we identify with. Rumi says that identity must be torn down, completely demolished along with its little tailoring shop, the patch-sewing of eating and drinking consolations. Inner work is not all ecstatic surrender. Don’t listen too often, Rumi advises, to the comforting part of the self that gives you what you want. Pray instead for a tough instructor. Nothing less than the radical disassembling of what we’ve wanted and gotten, and what we still wish for, allows us to discover the value of true being that lies underneath. The pickaxe, for Rumi, represents whatever does this fierce attention-work: clear discernment, a teacher’s presence, simple strength, and honesty with oneself. The pickaxe dismantles the illusory personality and finds two glints in the dirt. Like eyes they are, but these jewel lights are not personal. Rumi points to a treasure within our lives unconnected to experience. It is intrinsic, beyond calculation, a given, reached after the ego is cleared away and a one-pointedness digs under the premises.
Who makes these changes?
I shoot an arrow right.
It lands left.
I ride after a deer and find myself
chased by a hog.
I plot to get what I want
and end up in prison.
I dig pits to trap others
and fall in.
I should be suspicious
of what I want.
When the Prophet’s ray of intelligence
struck the dim-witted man he was with,
the man got very happy, and talkative.
Soon, he began unmannerly raving.
This is the problem with a selflessness
that comes quickly,
as with wine.
If the wine drinker
has a deep gentleness in him,
he will show that,
when drunk.
But if he has hidden anger and arrogance,
those appear,
and since most people do,
wine is forbidden to everyone.
On Resurrection Day your body testifies against you.
Your hand says, “I stole money.”
Your lips, “I said meanness.”
Your feet, “I went where I shouldn’t.”
Your genitals, “Me too.”
They will make your praying sound hypocritical.
Let the body’s doings speak openly now,
without your saying a word,
as a student’s walking behind a teacher
says, “This one knows more clearly
than I the way.”
This place is a dream.
Only a sleeper considers it real.
Then death comes like dawn,
and you wake up laughing
at what you thought was your grief.
But there’s a difference with this dream.
Everything cruel and unconscious
done in the illusion of the present world,
all that does not fade away at the death-waking.
It stays,
and it must be interpreted.
All the mean laughing,
all the quick, sexual wanting,
those torn coats of Joseph,
they change into powerful wolves
that you must face.
The retaliation that sometimes comes now,
the swift, payback hit,
is just a boy’s game
to what the other will be.
You know about circumcision here.
It’s full castration there!
And this groggy time we live,
this is what it’s like:
A man goes to sleep in the town
where he has always lived, and he dreams he’s living
in another town.
In the dream, he doesn’t remember
the town he’s sleeping in his bed in. He believes
the reality of the dream town.
The world is that kind of sleep.
The dust of many crumbled cities
settles over us like a forgetful doze,
but we are older than those cities.
We began
as a mineral. We emerged into plant life
and into the animal state, and then into being human,
and always we have forgotten our former states,
except in early spring when we slightly recall
being green again.
That’s how a young person turns
toward a teacher. That’s how a baby leans
toward the breast, without knowing the secret
of its desire, yet turning instinctively.
Humankind is being led along an evolving course,
through this migration of intelligences,
and though we seem to be sleeping,
there is an inner wakefulness
that directs the dream,
and that will eventually startle us back
to the truth of who we are.
Some commentary on I was a hidden treasure,
and I desired to be known: tear down
this house. A hundred thousand new houses
can be built from the transparent yellow carnelian
buried beneath it, and the only way to get to that
is to do the work of demolishing and then
digging under the foundations. With that value
in hand all the new construction will be done
without effort. And anyway, sooner or later this house
will fall on its own. The jewel treasure will be
uncovered, but it won’t be yours then. The buried
wealth is your pay for doing the demolition,
the pick and shovel work. If you wait and just
let it happen, you’d bite your hand and say,
“I didn’t do as I knew I should have.” This
is a rented house. You don’t own the deed.
You have a lease, and you’ve set up a little shop,
where you barely make a living sewing patches
on torn clothing. Yet only a few feet underneath
are two veins, pure red and bright gold carnelian.
Quick! Take the pickaxe and pry the foundation.
You’ve got to quit this seamstress work.
What does the patch-sewing mean, you ask. Eating
and drinking. The heavy cloak of the body
is always getting torn. You patch it with food,
and other restless ego-satisfactions. Rip up
one board from the shop floor and look into
the basement. You’ll see two glints in the dirt.
A naked man jumps in the river, hornets swarming
above him. The water is the zikr, remembering,
There is no reality but God. There is only God.
The hornets are his sexual remembering, this woman,
that woman. Or if a woman, this man, that.
The head comes up. They sting.
Breathe water. Become river head to foot.
Hornets leave you alone then. Even if you’re far
from the river, they pay no attention.
No one looks for stars when the sun’s out.
A person blended into God does not disappear. He, or she,
is just completely soaked in God’s qualities.
Do you need a quote from the Qur’an?
All shall be brought into our Presence.
Join those travelers. The lamps we burn go out,
some quickly. Some last till daybreak.
Some are dim, some intense, all fed with fuel.
If a light goes out in one house, that doesn’t affect
the next house. This is the story of the animal soul,
not the divine soul. The sun shines on every house.
When it goes down, all houses get dark.
Light is the image of your teacher. Your enemies
love the dark. A spider weaves a web over a light,
out of himself, or herself, makes a veil.
Don’t try to control a wild horse by grabbing its leg.
Take hold the neck. Use a bridle. Be sensible.
Then ride! There is a need for self-denial.
Don’t be contemptuous of old obediences. They help.
The core of masculinity does not derive
from being male,
nor friendliness from those who console.
Your old grandmother says, “Maybe you shouldn’t
go to school. You look a little pale.”
Run when you hear that.
A father’s stern slaps are better.
Your bodily soul wants comforting.
The severe father wants spiritual clarity.
He scolds but eventually
leads you into the open.
Pray for a tough instructor
to hear and act and stay within you.
We have been busy accumulating solace.
Make us afraid of how we were.
to rid themselves of any lying,
who empty the self
and have only clear being there.
A dervish knocked at a house
to ask for a piece of dry bread,
or moist, it didn’t matter.
“This is not a bakery,” said the owner.
“Might you have a bit of gristle then?”
“Does this look like a butchershop?”
“A little flour?”
“Do you hear a grinding stone?”
“Some water?”
“This is not a well.”
Whatever the dervish asked for,
the man made some tired joke
and refused to give him anything.
Finally the dervish ran in the house,
lifted his robe, and squatted
as though to take a shit.
“Hey, hey!”
“Quiet, you sad man. A deserted place
is a fine spot to relieve oneself,
and since there’s no living thing here,
or means of living, it needs fertilizing.”
The dervish began his own list
of questions and answers.
“What kind of bird are you? Not a falcon,
trained for the royal hand. Not a peacock,
painted with everyone’s eyes. Not a parrot,
that talks for sugar cubes. Not a nightingale,
that sings like someone in love.
Not a hoopoe bringing messages to Solomon,
or a stork that builds on a cliffside.
What exactly do you do?
You are no known species.
You haggle and make jokes
to keep what you own for yourself.
You have forgotten the One
who doesn’t care about ownership,
who doesn’t try to turn a profit
from every human exchange.”