R U M I

[Guest guest]

There is a community of the spirit.Join it, and feel the delightof walking in the noisy streetand being the noise.Drink all your passionand be a disgrace.Close both eyesto see with the other eye.Open your hands,if you want to be held.Sit down in this circle.Quit acting like a wolf, and feelthe shepherd's love filling you.At night, your beloved wanders.Don't accept consolations.Close your mouth against food.Taste the lover's mouth in yours.You moan, "She left me.He left me."Twenty more will come.Be empty of worrying.Think who created thought!Why do you stay in prisonwhen the door is so wide open?Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.Live in silence.Flow down and down in alwayswidening rings of being.- Rumi, Ghazal (Ode) 2577, version by Coleman Barks from The Essential Rumi, posted to Sunlig ht