Rumi Moment of the Week: The Grave of This Body

I mean Rumi has some really dope bars right?!

The first time I heard this quote I think I shuddered a little bit. But the poem though, the entire poem is freedom.

It is kind of a given that the TRUTH cannot be contained in words — how could you describe God? Yet I believe Rumi and other mystic poets have found a way to see into Divine space and then translate what has been experienced.

Wake and Walk Out
(or as I like to call it: Get Free)

If I flinched at every grief, I
would be an intelligent idiot. If

I were not the sun, I’d ebb and
flow like sadness. If you were not

my guide, I’d wander lost in Sanai.
If there were no light, I’d keep

opening and closing the door. If
there were no rose garden, where

would the morning breezes go? If
love did not want music and laughter

and poetry, what would I say? If
you were not medicine, I would look

sick and skinny. If there were no
leafy limbs in the air, there would

be no wet roots. If no gifts were
given, I’d grow arrogant and cruel.

If there were no way into God, I
would not have lain in the grave of

this body so long. If there were no
way from left to right, I could not

be swaying with the grasses. If
there were no grace and no kindness,

conversation would be useless, and
nothing we do would matter. Listen

to the new stories that begin every
day. If light were not beginning

again in the east, I would not now
wake and walk out inside this dawn.

Stories/Koans/Parables: By Any Other Name

Abraham Lincoln once asked one of his secretaries, “If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have?”.

“Five,” replied the secretary.

“No,” said the President, “The answer is four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”

AHA!

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So I’ve been reading this book, “The Untethered Soul,” which has so far turned out to be a dumbed-down version of Non-Dualistic philosophy. And that’s great because that shit can get confusing at times* and it’s good to have it explained in familiar terms. In Chapter Three, the writer challenges you to identify yourself by answering the question, “Who Are You?” This is a basic intervention used by Sri Ramana Maharashi, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, and even tweeked somewhat by my favorite, Sri Mooji. The technique is not groundbreaking but I appreciate the way he takes the reader, step by step, into an understanding of how you are not your name, your relationships, your experiences, your feelings or your thoughts.

You are not these things and you never could be any of these things. Your name and titles and experiences are merely costumes — to paraphrase Lincoln, “calling you a person doesn’t make you a person.”

To quote Sri Rupal “You are God in drag.”

Who are you then? Well that’s for each of us to find out in our individual practices, sitting silently or dancing violently into the great Understanding. But when you take that leap into admitting “I am not my body, nor my mind, nor any experience or culmination of experiences that happen in front of me” then you will begin the long and treacherous journey into yourself.

Sat Nam — May you be free today.

K

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*hit me up if you are able to give me a dumbed-down explanation of the difference between Consciousness and Awareness though, for real for real

 

Things I Learned: Compassion

Emelia Sam gives daily gems on “Life, love and liberation from a soul-centered perspective” over on 360 Soul. She has recently begun holding conversations with  like-minded individuals on related topics and asked to speak with me about Compassion. We discussed the role compassion plays in my practice and in the way I work with others in their practice as well. Her conversation series is called “PIQUE” and can easily found on YouTube.

Here is what I learned, and what we discussed, about Compassion — I welcome your feedback!

 

 

K