A Rumi Take
Jan Mirehiel
“Humankind is being led along an evolving course…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.”1
Rumi, a thirteenth century Sufi mystic, was able to capture the essence of a spirit-filled life through his lyrical poetry. What he has to say in this beautiful selection speaks directly to the idea that the perfect world, which we believe to be the Ascended Earth, already exists. It is only waits for us to see it, to recognize it, to step into it, and claim it as true:
There was a long drought. Crops dried up.
The vineyard leaves turned black.
People were gasping and dying like fish thrown up on the shore and left there.
But one man was always laughing, and smiling.
A group came and asked,
“Have you no compassion for this suffering?”
He answered, “To your eyes this is a drought.
To me it is a form of God’s joy.
Everywhere in this desert I see green corn
growing waist high, a sea-wilderness of young ears
greener than leeks.
I reach to touch them. How could I not?
You and your friends are like Pharaoh
drowning in the Red Sea of your Body’s blood.
Become friends with Moses, and see this other riverwater.”
When you think your father is guilty of an injustice,
his face looks cruel. Joseph, to his envious brothers,
seemed dangerous. When you make peace with your father,
he will look peaceful and friendly. The whole world is a form for truth.
When someone does not feel grateful
to that, the forms appear to be as he feels.
They mirror his anger, his greed, and his fear.
Make peace with the universe. Take joy in it.
It will turn to gold. Resurrection
will be now. Every moment,
a new beauty.
And never any boredom!
Instead this abundant pouring
noise of many springs in your ears.
The tree limbs will move like people dancing,
who suddenly know what the mystical life is.
The leaves snap their fingers like they’re hearing music.
They are! A sliver of mirror shines out
from under a felt covering. Think how it will be
when the whole thing is open to the air and the sunlight!
There are some mysteries that I’m not telling you.
There’s so much doubt everywhere, so many opinions
that say, “What you announce may be true
in the future, but not now.”
But this form of universal truth that I see says,
This is not a prediction. This is here, in this instant, cash in hand!2
1From “The Dream That Must Be Interpreted” –p.113, The Essential Rumi, (translated by Coleman Banks, with John Moyne), Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 1997.
2“Green Ears,” — p. 239, Ibid