"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing 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." "The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along." "You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?" "Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death." "What you seek is seeking you." "When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy." "If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?" "Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free." "Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form." "Knock, And He'll open the door Vanish, And He'll make you shine like the sun Fall, And He'll raise you to the heavens Become nothing, And He'll turn you into everything." "In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art." "The wound is the place where the Light enters you." "Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." "Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious." "This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet." "A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home." "There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don't you?" "Do not be satisfied with the stories that come before you. Unfold your own myth." "Let Yourself Be Silently Drawn By the Stronger Pull Of That Which You Really Love." "We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust." "Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment." "I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think." "People want you to be happy. Don't keep serving them your pain! If you could untie your wings and free your soul of jealousy, you and everyone around you would fly up like doves." "Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond." "Sit, be still, and listen, because you're drunk and we're at the edge of the roof." "I want to see you. Know your voice. Recognize you when you first come 'round the corner. Sense your scent when I come into a room you've just left. Know the lift of your heel, the glide of your foot. Become familiar with the way you purse your lips then let them part, just the slightest bit, when I lean in to your space and kiss you. I want to know the joy of how you whisper 'more' " "An eye is meant to see things. The soul is here for its own joy. A head has one use: For loving a true love. Feet: To chase after. Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind, for learning what men have done and tried to do. Mysteries are not to be solved: The eye goes blind when it only wants to see why. A lover is always accused of something. But when he finds his love, whatever was lost in the looking comes back completely changed." "Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought! Why do you stay in prison When the door is so wide open?" "Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others' faults. Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the Earth for modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you appear." "Either give me more wine or leave me alone." "Two there are who are never satisfied -- the lover of the world and the lover of knowledge." "Reason is powerless in the expression of Love." "Who could be so lucky? Who comes to a lake for water and sees the reflection of moon?" "Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again , come , come." "A mountain keeps an echo deep inside. That's how I hold your voice." "I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way. Whoever brought me here will have to take me home." "You try to be faithful And sometimes you're cruel. You are mine. Then, you leave. Without you, I can't cope. And when you take the lead, I become your footstep. Your absence leaves a void. Without you, I can't cope. You have disturbed my sleep, You have wrecked my image. You have set me apart. Without you, I can't cope." "But listen to me. For one moment Quit being sad. Hear blessings Dropping their blossoms Around you." "Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah - it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you." "Beauty surrounds us." "I have lived on the lip Of insanity, wanting to know reasons, Knocking on a door. It opens. I've been knocking from the inside." "Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words." "Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself." "You wander from room to room Hunting for the diamond necklace That is already around your neck!" "This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor...Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond." "Travel brings power and love back into your life." "Inside you there's an artist you don't know about... say yes quickly, as if you know, if you've known it from before the beginning of the universe." "Be like melting snow - wash yourself of yourself." "Take someone who doesn't keep score, who's not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing, who has not the slightest interest even in his own personality: he's free." "I know you're tired but come, this is the way." "In Silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves." "The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you Don't go back to sleep! You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep! People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch, The door is round and open Don't go back to sleep!" "On a day When the wind is perfect, The sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty. Today is such a Day." "All people on the planet are children, except for a very few. No one is grown up except those free of desire." "Is it really so that the one I love is everywhere?" "Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy." "Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom. How do they learn it? They fall and falling, They're given wings." "They say there is a doorway from heart to heart, but what is the use of a door when there are no walls?" "Love comes with a knife, not some shy question, and not with fears for its reputation!" "Within tears, find hidden laughter Seek treasures amid ruins, sincere one. " "Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave 'til it gets to shore." "At night, I open the window And ask the moon to come And press its face against mine. Breathe into me. Close the language-door And open the love-window. The moon won't use the door, Only the window." "You are a volume in the divine book A mirror to the power that created the universe Whatever you want, ask it of yourself Whatever you're looking for can only be found Inside of you." "Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be." "Learn the alchemy true human beings know. The moment you accept what troubles you've been given the door with open." "When someone is counting out gold for you, don't look at your hands,or the gold. Look at the giver." "Only from the heart can you touch the sky." "The ground's generosity takes in our compost and grows beauty! Try to be more like the ground." "Not only the thirsty seek the water, the water as well seeks the thirsty." "Here is a relationship booster That is guaranteed to Work: Every time your spouse or lover says something stupid Make your eyes light up as if you Just heard something Brilliant." "Like a sculptor, if necessary, Carve a friend out of stone. Realize that your inner sight is blind And try to see a treasure in everyone." "You are the Truth from foot to brow. Now, what else would you like to know?" "I, you, he, she, we In the garden of mystic lovers, These are not true distinctions." "Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged." "This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say." "The moon stays bright when it doesn't avoid the night...." "Today, like every other day, we wake up empty And frightened. Don't open the door to the study And begin reading. Take down the dulcimer. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." "The morning wind spreads its fresh smell. We must get up and take that in, that wind that lets us live. Breathe before it's gone." "The lion is most handsome when looking for food." "Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings." "When someone beats a rug, the blows are not against the rug, but against the dust in it." "For without you, I swear, the town Has become like a prison to me. Distraction and the mountain And the desert, all I desire." "Since Love has made ruins of my heart The sun must come and illumine them. Such generosity has broken me with shame." "Oh sky, without me, do not change, Oh moon, without me, do not shine; Oh earth, without me, do not grow, Oh time, without me, do not go. ...Oh, you cannot go, without me." "Don't try to steer the boat. Don't open shop for yourself. Listen. Keep silent. You are not God's mouthpiece. Try to be an ear, And if you do speak, ask for explanations." "Something opens our wings. Something makes boredom and hurt disappear. Someone fills the cup in front of us: We taste only sacredness." "Keep walking, though there's no place to get to. Don't try to see through the distances. That's not for human beings. Move within, But don't move the way fear makes you move." "If the foot of the trees were not tied to earth, they would be pursuing me.. For I have blossomed so much, I am the envy of the gardens." "Have you ever gotten breathless before from a beautiful face, for i see you there, my dear." "In the slaughterhouse of love, they kill only the best, none of the weak or deformed. Don't run away from this dying. Whoever's not killed for love is dead meat." "There are lovers content with longing. I'm not one of them." "Poems are rough notations for the music we are." "That moon which the sky never saw even in dreams has risen again." "I was dead, then alive. Weeping, then laughing. The power of love came into me, And I became fierce like a lion, Then tender like the evening star." "I am weary of personal worrying, In love with the art of madness." "If the wine drinker Has a deep gentleness in him, He will show that when drunk. But if he has hidden anger and arrogance, Those appear." "Keep on knocking 'til the joy inside Opens a window Look to see who's there" "No more words. In the name of this place we drink in with our breathing, stay quiet like a flower. So the nightbirds will start singing." "Pull the thorn of existence out of the heart! Fast! For when you do, you will see thousands of rose gardens in yourself." "You are a lover of your own experience ... not of me ... you turn to me to feel your own emotion." "Into this new love, die Your way begins On the other side Become the sky Take an axe to the prison wall, Escape Walk out like someone Suddenly born into color Do it now" "You have forgotten the One who doesn't care about ownership, who doesn't try to turn a profit from every human exchange." "The way of love is not a subtle argument. The door there is devastation. Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom. How do they learn it? They fall, and falling, they're given wings." "Love is the cure, for your pain will keep giving birth to more pain until your eyes constantly exhale love as effortlessly as your body yields its scent." "You and I have spoken all these words, but for the way we have to go,words are no preparation. I have one small drop of knowing in my soul. Let it dissolve in your ocean." "Flow down and down in always widening rings of being." "How will you know the difficulties of being human, if you are always flying off to blue perfection? Where will you plant your grief seeds? Workers need ground to scrape and hoe, not the sky of unspecified desire." "When you feel a peaceful joy, that's when you are near truth." "The rose's rarest essence lives in the thorns." "Love calls - everywhere and always. We're sky bound. Are you coming?" "I want to be where your bare foot walks, because maybe before you step, you'll look at the ground. I want that blessing." "Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love." "The world's flattery and hypocrisy is a sweet morsel: eat less of it, for it is full of fire. Its fire is hidden while its taste is manifest, but its smoke becomes visible in the end." "Whoever finds love beneath hurt and grief disappears into emptiness with a thousand new disguises" "Without you the instruments would die. One sits close beside you. Another takes a long kiss. The tambourine begs, Touch my skin so I can be myself. Let me feel you enter each limb bone by bone, that what died last night can be whole today. Why live some soberer way, and feel you ebbing out? I won't do it. Either give me enough wine or leave me alone, now that I know how it is to be with you in constant conversation." "If in the darkness of ignorance, you don't recognize a person's true nature, look to see whom he has chosen for his leader." "Nothing can help me but that beauty. There was a dawn I remember when my soul heard something from your soul. I drank water from your spring and felt the current take me." "O my choice beauty You've gone But your love remains in my heart Your image in my eye O guide on my winding road I keep turning round and round in the hopes of Finding you." "You think because you understand 'one' you must also understand 'two', because one and one make two. But you must also understand 'and'." "Stars burn clear all night till dawn. Do that yourself, and a spring will rise in the dark with water your deepest thirst is for." "We can't help being thirsty, moving toward the voice of water." "Because I cannot sleep I make music in the night." "A strange passion is moving in my head. My heart has become a bird which searches in the sky. Every part of me goes in different directions. Is it really so that the one I love is Everywhere?" "The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth." "Each moment from all sides rushes to us the call to love. We are running to contemplate its vast green field. Do you want to come with us?" "The Prophets accept all agony and trust it For the water has never feared the fire." "You're water. We're the millstone. You're wind. We're dust blown up into shapes. You're spirit. We're the opening and closing of our hands. You're the clarity. We're the language that tries to say it. You're joy. We're all the different kinds of laughing." "Put your thoughts to sleep, do not let them cast a shadow over the moon of your heart. Let go of thinking." "Oh soul, you worry too much. You have seen your own strength. You have seen your own beauty. You have seen your golden wings. Of anything less, why do you worry? You are in truth the soul, of the soul, of the soul." "Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go." "This that is tormented and very tired, tortured with restraints like a madman, this heart." "Keep your intelligence white hot and your grief glistening so your life will stay fresh." "My place is the Placeless, my trace is the Traceless; 'Tis neither body nor soul, for I belong to the soul of the Beloved. I have put duality away, I have seen that the two worlds are one; One I seek, One I know, One I see, One I call." "The same wind that uproots trees makes the grass shine. The lordly wind loves the weakness and the lowness of grasses. Never brag of being strong. The axe doesn't worry how thick the branches are. It cuts them to pieces. But not the leaves. It leaves the leaves alone." "I was a thorn rushing to be with a rose, vinegar blending with honey... Then I found some dirt to make an ointment that would honor my soul... Love says, 'You are right, but don't claim these changes. Remember, I am wind. You are an ember I ignite.'" ' "Be quiet now and wait. It may be that the ocean one, the one we desire so to move into and become, desires us out here on land a little longer, going our sundry roads to the shore." "Hear this if you can: If you want to reach him You have to go beyond yourself And when you finally arrive at the land of absence Be silent Don't say a thing Ecstasy, not words, is the language spoken there" "We were green: we ripened and grew golden. The Sea terrified us: we learned how to drown. Squat and earthbound, we unfolded huge wings. We started sober: are love's startled drunkards. You hide me in your cloak of nothingness Reflect my ghost in your glass of being I am nothing, yet appear: transparent dream Where your eternity briefly trembles." "A craftsman pulled a reed from the reedbed, cut holes in it, and called it a human being. Since then, it's been wailing a tender agony of parting, never mentioning the skill that gave it life as a flute" "Every moment a taste of that beauty in our mouths, another stashed in a pocket. Impossible to say what: no cypress so handsome, no sunlight, a lonely hiddenness. Other pleasure gathers a crowd, starts a fight, lots of noise there. But soul beauty stays quiet..his amazing whereabouts unknown inside my heart." "Hall of Love has ten thousand swords. Don't be afraid to use one." "You are an ocean in a drop of dew, all the universes in a thin sack of blood. What are these pleasures then, these joys, these worlds that you keep reaching for, hoping they will make you more alive?" "Love isn't the work of the tender and the gentle; Love is the work of wrestlers. The one who becomes a servant of lovers is really a fortunate sovereign. Don't ask anyone about Love; ask Love about Love. Love is a cloud that scatters pearls." "Today I'm out wandering, turning my skull into a cup for others to drink wine from. In this town somewhere there sits a calm, intelligent man, who doesn't know what he's about to do!" "Bitter your acts, bitter am I, Kindness your deeds, kindness am I, Pleasant and gentle, so you are, Fine honeyed lips and sweet talker." "You soak up my soul and mingle me. Each drop of my blood cries out to the earth. We are partners, blended as one." "What the sayer of praise is really praising is himself, by saying implicitly, My eyes are clear. Likewise, someone who criticizes is criticizing himself, saying implicitly, "I can't see very well with my eyes so inflamed." "The soul is here for its own joy." "Everything you possess of skill, and wealth, and handicraft, wasn't it first merely a thought and a quest?" "O Love, O pure deep Love, be here, be now, Be all - worlds dissolve into your stainless endless radiance, Frail living leaves burn with your brighter than cold stares Make me your servant, your breath, your core." "We gather at night to celebrate being human. Sometimes we call out low to the tambourine. Fish drink the sea, but the sea does not get smaller! We eat the clouds and evening light. We are slaves tasting the royal wine." "Someone who does not run toward the allure of love walks a road where nothing lives. But this dove here senses the love hawk floating above, and waits, and will not be driven or scared to safety." "Though Destiny a hundred times waylays you,in the end it pitches a tent for you in Heaven." "Body is not veiled from soul, neither soul from body, Yet no man hath ever seen a soul." "The fault is in the one who blames. Spirit sees nothing to criticize." "I am your moon and your moonlight too I am your flower garden and your water too I have come all this way, eager for you Without shoes or shawl I want you to laugh To kill all your worries To love you To nourish you." "Dancing is not just getting up painlessly, like a leaf blown on the wind; dancing is when you tear your heart out and rise out of your body to hang suspended between the worlds." "You are the drop,and the ocean you are kindness,you are anger, you are sweetness,you are poison. Do not make me more disheartened. you are the chamber of the sun, you are the abode of venus, you are the garden of all hope. Oh, Beloved, let me enter." "Soul receives from soul that knowledge, therefore not by book nor from tongue. If knowledge of mysteries come after emptiness of mind, that is illumination of heart." "Let silence take you to the core of life." "There came one and knocked at the door of the Beloved. And a voice answered and said, 'Who is there?' The lover replied, 'It is I.' 'Go hence,' returned the voice; 'there is no room within for thee and me.' Then came the lover a second time and knocked and again the voice demanded, 'Who is there?' He answered, 'It is thou.' 'Enter,' said the voice, 'for I am within." "There is a way between voice and presence, where information flows. In disciplined silence it opens; with wandering talk it closes." "Study me as much as you like, you will not know me, for I differ in a hundred ways from what you see me to be. Put yourself behind my eyes and see me as I see myself, for I have chosen to dwell in a place you cannot see." "You are my shams." "Listen, O drop, give yourself up without regret, and in exchange gain the Ocean. Listen, O drop, bestow upon yourself this honor, and in the arms of the Sea be secure. Who indeed should be so fortunate? An Ocean wooing a drop! In God's name, in God's name, sell and buy at once! Give a drop, and take this Sea full of pearls." "Love asks us to enjoy our life For nothing good can come of death. Who is alive? I ask. Those who are born of love. Seek us in love itself, Seek love in us ourselves. Sometimes I venerate love, Sometimes it venerates me." "Oh you, straying heart, just come! Oh you, aching liver, just come! If the path to the gate is closed, Take the way by the wall, but come!" "In the house of lovers, the music never stops, the walls are made of songs and the floor dances." "The cure for pain is in the pain." "When the rose is gone and the garden faded you will no longer hear the nightingale's song. The Beloved is all; the lover just a veil. The Beloved is living; the lover a dead thing. If love withholds its strengthening care, the lover is left like a bird without care, the lover is left like a bird without wings. How will I be awake and aware if the light of the Beloved is absent? Love wills that this Word be brought forth." "Suddenly the drunken sweetheart appeared out of my door. She drank a cup of ruby wine and sat by my side. Seeing and holding the lockets of her hair My face became all eyes, and my eyes all hands." "If I can only recount The story of my life Right out of my body Flames will grow." "Be helpless, dumbfounded, Unable to say yes or no. Then a stretcher will come from grace to gather us up. We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty. If we say we can, we're lying. If we say No, we don't see it, That No will behead us And shut tight our window onto spirit. So let us rather not be sure of anything, Beside ourselves, and only that, so Miraculous beings come running to help. Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute, We shall be saying finally With tremendous eloquence, Lead us. When we have totally surrendered to that beauty, We shall be a mighty kindness." "When you have indulged a lust, your wing drops off; you become lame, abandoned by a fantasy. People fancy they are enjoying themselves, but they are really tearing out their wings for the sake of an illusion." "As for us, He has appointed the job of permanent unemployment. If he wanted us to work, after all, He would not have created this wine. With a skinfull of this, Sir, would you rush out to commit economics?" "The wave of Atlast came along and caulked the body's ship; When the ship is wrecked once more, The turn of union and Encounter will come." "There is a window between heart and heart: They are never separate like two bodies. Two lamps may not be united in their form But their light merges into each other." "Tomorrow you'll be brave, you say? Fool! Dive today!" "No one who has ever had a sign from you need worry again about 'name' or 'sign.' " "He who perceives Your chain-like, linked tress-on-tress and then stays "rational" is mad." "The man to whom is unveiled the mystery of Love Exists no longer, but vanishes into Love. Place before the Sun a burning candle And watch its brilliance disappear before that blaze. The candle exists no longer, it is transformed into Light; There are no more signs of it, it itself becomes sign." "Whatever form you can imagine, He stands above it Like a painter above his brush. However much "higher" you gaze, He is higher than that "higher"! Abandon words, abandon books - let Him be your Book!" "As long as an angel is not annihilated, it is a devil." "They ask, "What is love?" Reply: "Giving up your self-will." "Let a thousand wrangling desires become one Love!" "Beauties have come from the Invisible to call you home." "The whole world is racing in the wrong direction For everyone is terrified of non-existence That is, in reality, the only certain refuge." "Wings of Love long only to fly away from all directions." "You are a placeless fire All places burn away in, A whirlpool of Nowhere Drowning me deeper, deeper." "What is a tiny insignificant seed that, when Spring arrives, It should not be annihilated for a tree to arrive?" "Define and narrow me, you starve yourself of yourself. Nail me down in a box of cold words, that box is your coffin. I do not know who I am. I am in astounded lucid confusion." Rumi