The egg is Rumi’s image for the private place where each individual globe of soul fruit becomes elaborately unique. Incubation in secret practices produces the lovely differences. Out of one leathery egg, a sparrow, out of a similar one, a snake. Transformations that happen on retreat, the forty-day chilla, are comparable to the changes that come during nine months in a human womb. Meditation, or any solitary practice (a walk before dawn, a poem every morning, sitting on the roof at sunset), gives depth and expands the soul’s action.
A man in prison is sent a prayer rug by his friend. What he had wanted, of course, was a file or a crowbar or a key! But he began using the rug, doing five-times prayer before dawn, at noon, mid-afternoon, after sunset, and before sleep. Bowing, sitting up, bowing again, he notices an odd pattern in the weave of the rug, just at the qibla, the point, where his head touches. He studies and meditates on that pattern, gradually discovering that it is a diagram of the lock that confines him in his cell and how it works. He’s able to escape. Anything you do every day can open into the deepest spiritual place, which is freedom.
You’re song,
a wished-for song.
Go through the ear to the center
where sky is, where wind,
where silent knowing.
Put seeds and cover them.
Blades will sprout
where you do your work.
The Prophet Muhammad said,
“There is no better companion
on this way than what you do. Your actions will be
your best friend, or if you’re cruel and selfish,
your actions will be a poisonous snake
that lives in your grave.”
But tell me,
can you do the good work without a teacher?
Can you even know what it is without the presence
of a Master? Notice how the lowest livelihood
requires some instruction.
First comes knowledge,
then the doing of the job. And much later,
perhaps after you’re dead, something grows
from what you’ve done.
Look for help and guidance
in whatever craft you’re learning. Look for a generous
teacher, one who has absorbed the tradition he’s in.
Look for pearls in oyster shells.
Learn technical skill from a craftsman.
Whenever you meet genuine spiritual teachers,
be gentle and polite and fair with them.
Ask them questions, and be eager
for answers. Never condescend.
If a master tanner wears an old, threadbare smock,
that doesn’t diminish his mastery.
If a fine blacksmith works at the bellows
in a patched apron, it doesn’t affect
how he bends the iron.
Strip away your pride,
and put on humble clothes.
If you want to learn theory,
talk with theoreticians. That way is oral.
When you learn a craft, practice it.
That learning comes through the hands.
If you want dervishhood, spiritual poverty,
and emptiness, you must be friends with a sheikh.
Talking about it, reading books, and doing practices
don’t help. Soul receives from soul that knowing.
The mystery of spiritual emptiness
may be living in a pilgrim’s heart, and yet
the knowing of it may not yet be his.
Wait for the illuminating openness,
as though your chest were filling with light,
as when God said,
Did We not expand you?
(Qur’an 94:1)
Don’t look for it outside yourself.
You are the source of milk. Don’t milk others!
There is a milk fountain inside you.
Don’t walk around with an empty bucket.
You have a channel into the ocean, and yet
you ask for water from a little pool.
Beg for that love expansion. Meditate only
on THAT. The Qur’an says,
And He is with you
(57:4).
There is a basket of fresh bread on your head,
and yet you go door to door asking for crusts.
Knock on your inner door. No other.
Sloshing knee-deep in fresh riverwater, yet
you keep wanting a drink from other people’s waterbags.
Water is everywhere around you, but you see only
barriers that keep you from water.
The horse is beneath the rider’s thighs, and still
he asks, “Where’s my horse?”
Right there, under you!
“Yes, this is a horse, but where’s the horse?”
Can’t you see!
“Yes, I can see, but whoever saw such a horse?”
Mad with thirst, he can’t drink from the stream
running so close by his face. He’s like a pearl
on the deep bottom, wondering, inside his shell,
Where’s the ocean?
His mental questionings
form the barrier. His physical eyesight
bandages his knowing. Self-consciousness
plugs his ears.
Stay bewildered in God,
and only that.
Those of you who are scattered,
simplify your worrying lives. There is one
righteousness: Water the fruit trees,
and don’t water the thorns. Be generous
to what nurtures the spirit and God’s luminous
reason-light. Don’t honor what causes
dysentery and knotted-up tumors.
Don’t feed both sides of yourself equally.
The spirit and the body carry different loads
and require different attentions.
Too often
we put saddlebags on Jesus and let the donkey
run loose in the pasture.
Don’t make the body do
what the spirit does best, and don’t put a big load
on the spirit that the body could carry easily.
We are brought thick desserts, and we rarely refuse them.
We worship devoutly when we’re with others.
Hours we sit, though we get up quickly
after a few minutes, when we pray alone.
We hurry down the gullet of our wantings.
But these qualities can change,
as minerals in the ground rise inside trees
and become tree, as a plant faces an animal
and enters the animal, so a human
can put down the heavy
body baggage and
be light.
God called the Prophet Muhammad Muzzammil,
“The One Who Wraps Himself,”
and said,
“Come out from under your cloak, you so fond
of hiding and running away.
Don’t cover your face.
The world is a reeling, drunken body, and you
are its intelligent head.
Don’t hide the candle
of your clarity. Stand up and burn
through the night, my prince.
Without your light
a great lion is held captive by a rabbit!
Be the captain of the ship
Mustafa, my chosen one,
my expert guide.
Look how the caravan of civilization
has been ambushed.
Fools are everywhere in charge.
Do not practice solitude like Jesus. Be in
the assembly,
and take charge of it.
As the bearded griffin,
the Humay, lives on Mt. Qaf because he’s native to it,
so you should live most naturally out in public
and be a communal teacher of souls.”
A friend remarks to the Prophet, “Why is it
I get screwed in business deals?
It’s like a spell. I become distracted
by business talk and make wrong decisions.”
Muhammad replies, “Stipulate with every transaction
that you need three days to make sure.”
Deliberation is one of the qualities of God.
Throw a dog a bit of something.
He sniffs to see if he wants it.
Be that careful.
Sniff with your wisdom-nose.
Get clear. Then decide.
The universe came into being gradually
over six days. God could have just commanded,
Be!
Little by little a person reaches forty and fifty
and sixty, and feels more complete. God could have thrown
full-blown prophets flying through the cosmos in an instant.
Jesus said one word, and a dead man sat up,
but creation usually unfolds,
like calm breakers.
Constant, slow movement teaches us to keep working
like a small creek that stays clear,
that doesn’t stagnate, but finds a way
through numerous details, deliberately.
Deliberation is born of joy,
like a bird from an egg.
Birds don’t resemble eggs!
Think how different the hatching out is.
A white leathery snake egg, a sparrow’s egg;
a quince seed, an apple seed: very different things
look similar at one stage.
These leaves, our bodily personalities, seem identical,
but the globe of soul fruit
we make,
each is elaborately
unique.
Muhammad, in the presence of Gabriel,
“Friend,
let me see you as you really are. Let me look
as an interested observer looks at his interest.”
“You could not endure it. The sense of sight
is too weak to take in this reality.”
“But show yourself
anyway, that I can understand what may not be known
with the senses.”
The body senses are wavering and blurry,
but there is a clear fire inside,
a flame like Abraham,
that is Alpha and Omega. Human beings seem to be derived,
evolved, from this planet, but essentially,
humanity is the origin of the world.
Remember this!
A tiny gnat’s outward form flies around and around
in pain and wanting, while the gnat’s inward nature
includes the entire galactic whirling of the universe!
Muhammad persisted in his request,
and Gabriel revealed a single feather
that reached from the East to the West,
a glimpse that would have instantly crumbled
to powder a mountain range.
Muhammad stared, senseless.
Gabriel came and held him in his arms.
Awe serves
for strangers. This close-hugging love
is for friends.
Kings have formidable guards around them
with swords drawn, a public show of power
that keeps order and reduces arrogance and mischief
and other disasters.
But when the king comes
to the private banquet with his friends,
there’s harp music and the flute.
No kettledrums.
And no keeping accounts,
no judging behavior, no helmets, no armor.
Just silk and music and beautiful women bringing cups.
You know how it is, but who can say it!
Conclude this part, my friend,
and lead us the way we should go.
with glints of light. We are the space
between the fish and the moon,
while we sit here together.
Which is worth more, a crowd of thousands,
or your own genuine solitude?
Freedom, or power over an entire nation?
A little while alone in your room
will prove more valuable than anything else
that could ever be given you.