Rumi was a Sufi poet from the 13th century. The Sufis
are the mystic branch of the Islamic faith. Rumi was a professor of
religion who after meeting his teacher Shams became a prolific, spontaneous
composer of mystical poetry filled with burning for the Divine.

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Forget your life. Say God is Great. Get up.
You think you know what time it is. It's time to pray.
You've carved so many little figurines, too many.
Don't knock on any random door like a beggar.
Reach your long hand out to another door,
beyond where you go on the street,
the street where everyone says, "How are you?"
And no one says "How aren't you?"

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Tomorrow you'll see what you've broken and torn tonight,
Thrashing in the dark. Inside you there's an artist you don't know about.
He's not interested in how things look different in the moonlight.

If you are here unfaithfully with us, you're causing terrible damage.
If you've opened your loving to God's love,
you're helping people you don't know and have never seen.

Is what I say true? say yes quickly,
if you know, if you've known it
from before the beginning of the universe.

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Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing,
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.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.

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Outside the freezing desert night.
This other night inside grows warm, kindling.
Let the landscape be covered with thorny crust.
We have a soft garden in here.
the continents blasted, cities and little towns,
everything become a scorched blackened ball.

The news we hear is full of grief for that future,
But the real news inside here.
is there's no news at all.

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When it's cold and raining, You are more beautiful.
and the snow brings me even closer to Your Lips.

The Inner Secret, that which was never born,
You are That Freshness, and I am with You now.

I can't explain the goings, or the comings.
You enter suddenly, and I am nowhere again,
Inside the Majesty.

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Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence.
Existence: this place made from our love of that emptiness.
Yet somehow comes emptiness, this existence goes.
Praise to that happening, over and over.

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.
These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:
Words and what they try to say swept out the window,
down the slant of the roof.

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If you can't do this work yourself, don't worry.
You don't even have to make a decision, one way or another.
The Friend, who knows a lot more than you do, will bring
difficulties, and grief, and sickness, as medicine, as happiness,
as the essence of the moment when you're beaten,
when you hear Checkmate, and can finally say, with Hallaj's voice,
I trust You to kill me.

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The intellect says: "The six directions are limits: there is no way out."
Love says: " There is a way: I have traveled it thousands of times."
The intellect saw a market and started to haggle:
Love saw thousands of markets beyond that market.
Lovers who drink the dregs of the wine reel from bliss to bliss:
The dark hearted men of reason burn inwardly with denial.
The intellect says " Do not go forward, annihilation contains only thorns."
Love laughs back: The thorns are in you."
Enough words! Silence!
Pull the thorns of existence out of the heart! Fast!
For when you do you will see thousands of rose gardens in yourself.

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Mount the stallion of love and do not fear the path,
Love's stallion knows the way exactly.
With one leap, Love's horse will carry you home.
However black with obstacles the way may be.
The soul of a real lover spurns all animal fodder.
Only in the wine of bliss can his soul find peace.
Through the Grace of Shams-ud-Din of Tabriz, you will at possess,
A heart at once drunk and supremely lucid.

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Rumi has spoken the truth.
But no! Do not listen to Rumi!
It is He who has spoken the truth.

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O my Beloved! Take me, liberate my soul.
Fill me with your love, and release me from both worlds.
When I set my heart on anything but you a fire burns me from inside.
O my Beloved!
Take away what I want,
Take away what I do,
Take away everything that takes me from You.

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I know nothing of two worlds, all I know is the One.
I seek only One, I know only One,
I find only One, and I sing of only One.
I am so drunk with the wine of the Beloved,
That both worlds have slipped from my reach.

Now I have no business here,
Save to reach for the cup of my Beloved.

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Don't think. Don't get lost in your thoughts.
Your thoughts are a veil on the face of the Moon.
That Moon is your heart, and those thoughts cover your heart.
So let them go, just let them fall into the water.

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