Day 5: Birdwings

Birdwings

1

Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror

up to where you're bravely working.

2

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,

here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.

3

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.

If it were always a fist or always stretched open,

you would be paralyzed.

4

Your deepest presence

is in every small contracting and expanding,

the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated

as birdwings.

This is one of Rumi's most profound verses, thus far. It holds the key to the understanding of what we are, what we are capable of and where we're headed. Many thanks to my friend and co-author, Mahesh for leading me towards a deeper understanding of this verse.

Let's begin with the first two lines: 

Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror

up to where you're bravely working.

What have we lost? A phone, a pen? Whatever we think we've lost is a measure of ourselves. 

What level of loss elicits a deep grief? It is that level that defines our journey through this life and possibly the next. If we grieve for the loss of a material object, then that's one level at which we're bravely working. If we grieve for a lost / broken relationship then that's a slightly higher level at which we're operating and so on.

In Rumi's case, his grief is that he has 'lost' or not attained synchronicity with the Love Principle or the Soul Principle. He is grieving that that blissful union isn't taking place. He is bravely working towards the attainment of this higher experience that most other mortals would not even consider, especially in the prime of their lives. 

So, here's an important lesson for each one of us to consider: 

"What will make me feel complete?"

Having understood that, let's move on to the second section:

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,

here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.

When you least expect something that you've been working for, it comes to you. When we are trying to achieve something, especially a spiritual experience, we're putting ourselves into that effort. And the self that we put into the effort is our ego. When we let go of that ego and consequently of 'my effort', we find that we are given what we were trying to achieve. The grief that Rumi talks about in section 1 is the effort that is not (yet) resulting in anything. The outcome is supposed to make us feel complete.

The 'joyful face' that we can see, the one that we have been wanting to see, is the Soul Principle.

Finally, when it comes to achieving something, anything, whether you put in effort or no effort, you require Grace. The Universe must deliver to you the achievement of your goal so that you can move on to the next level of 'grief'. This is what is destiny. This Force is beyond any of us. It's like we're waiting at the door, but He has to open the door. And the more 'you' don't exist, the chances of the door opening go up.

The lesson for us: 

"Am I being arrogant in assuming that only my effort help me succeed or fail?"

The third section:

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.

If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed.

The hand in a fist is your effort. The hand opening up is you not-trying (no-effort) and being ready to receive Grace. If you always sit ready to receive without putting in any effort, you are as good as dead or paralyzed; you are not taking part in the process of life, of growth.

And, the fourth and final section:

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,

the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birdwings.

'Your deepest presence' refers to our full, aware self in this process of effort and no-effort. We need to be aware of this process and allow ourselves to participate in it deeply because when we do so, we can experience a sense of balance and harmony like the wings of a butterfly (birdwings).

Day 4: The Elegance of the Ermine

Hello readers & contributors,

A lot of the posts going forward are going to be collaborations between my spiritually bright Friend, Mahesh Gandhi and myself. For this one, especially, I drew upon his wisdom and his ability to communicate with simplicity and alacrity. Thanks, Mahesh!

The Elegance of the Ermine

Midnight, and a messenger comes from a prayer niche,

someone as quiet as moonlight,

yet with a torch that burns our sleeping.    ........................ 1

A king knocks on the doorkeeper's door

and laughing, leads everyone out to a table.

Our lips tremble at the cup, with the same trembling

as a drop of mercury.

The gentleness of the host is the same

as that that made the elegance of the ermine. ...................2

The dry and wet of a love affair,

those tears are identical to the taking in

and giving away of a waterwheel's turning. ........................3

The keys that open all gates

are strapped to love's chest. ..............................................4

When a bird is completely broken and still,

it gets removed from the snare. .........................................5

This list of rude likenesses

does not come near saying

what happens in our lives. .................................................6

For those of you who are keen to understand this with your head leading you to your heart, please see the commentary below. Follow the numbering of verse and comments to relate them to each other. The numbers are at the end of each verse / section. ENJOY!

1.

We're all sleeping. Well, most of us anyway. But, this isn't the sleeping of the body, it's of our being. Rumi says that when one becomes quiet and still (at midnight), the process of deep introspection and the perspective shift that happens as a result (the messenger, the torch) awakens us.

2.

In such an awakened state, we're able to see why we're here, where our potential for growth lies and this is exciting (trembling lips). But, the gentleness of the awakening process is subtle and like the elegance of the ermine.

3.

The love affair that man [in the Sufi sense] has for God is akin to the alternating cycles of parched land and fertile, wet soil. Sometimes he's bathed, drenched in that Love and sometimes he becomes too immersed in himself...when his heart is parched, he immerses himself in his Beloved once again. 

4.

The heart (emotion, feeling, intuition) holds the key that make this Love for the Supreme possible. The keys are not in our heads.

5.

When our sense of separateness (our ego) is overcome, we are free from the the trap of us versus them, I versus you and we begin to see the commonality at the core of all of our individual experiences.

6.

However, even the great, enlightened Rumi humbly admits that this list of metaphors is crude and arrogant (refer 'rude') and does not come close to what happens during the process of awakening in our lives.

Loved it, now.

Day 3 : Children Running Through

Children Running Through

I used to be shy.
You made me sing.

I used to refuse things at table.
Now I shout for more wine.

In somber dignity, I used to sit
on my mat and pray.

Now children run through
and make faces at me.

Please scroll to the comments below if you'd like to see a commentary. Have a wonderful day!

My thoughts:

In my experience, a key pillar of Sufism is the concept of Love for Godliness (God). This is different from other relationships with God – fear of God, God as giver (transactional view), God as someone to be revered…

I think that Rumi is celebrating that philosophy in this poem. When he talks about a transformation from shyness to singing, he seems to be describing ‘deewanee’.
When he talks about refusing things at the table, he seems to be referring to a life led from his frontal lobe (his rational mind).
When he refers to ‘shouting for more wine’, it’s a way to express his yearning to be ‘drunk’ with the love for God. The ‘somber dignity’ on the prayer mat is a reference to reverence.


It’s in the final couplet that he really drives the point home. By being lost in the love for God, he seems to be behaving like a madman…someone whose actions can’t be understood by the logical, rational mind of others. Children who are representative of purity and innocence don’t see him as adult – logical / rational. They play with him, treat him as one of their own.

Day 2: A Single Brushstroke Down

Light dawns, and any talk of proof
resembles a blind man’s cane at sunrise.             1

Remember the passage,
We are with you wherever you are.

Come back to that.
When did we ever leave it?                                    2

No matter we’re in a prison of forgetting
or enjoying the banquet of wisdom,
we are always inside presence.                             3a

Drunkenly asleep, tenderly awake,
clouded with grief, laughing like lightning,
angry at war, quiet with gratitude, we are nothing
in this many-mooded world of weather
but a single brushstroke down,
speaking of presence.                                            3b

*The word Allah in Arabic begins with a strong downward mark.

My thoughts:

I think that this poem has 3 parts to it. I've taken the liberty of numbering each part at its last line. My apologies if it breaks your flow while reading.

Part 1 is beautiful, even though it's just 2 lines. Asking for proof of a Higher Power, that one has been enlightened with, seems like asking for a cane at sunrise, just like a blind man would. 

Questions for reflection: Am I 'blind' ? Wouldn't I rather be 'blinded' ?

Part 2 was quite unclear to me. It seems like Rumi is having a dialogue with his students or with one of his spiritual friends (and there were 4 or 5 of them beginning with Shams of Tabriz...they are listed out and mentioned in Coleman Barks' introduction to 'Essential Rumi'). Through the dialogue, he seems to be reminding his readers that the Universe is always with us. Through the assertion of ego, the sense of self as separate from others, we only seem to be challenging that. He exhorts us to return to the idea that the Universe is always with us.

But, I really would like some guidance with this part 2.

Part 3a: Whether we are in the prison of our own ego-asserted world (I did this / I made it happen / I cause and so and only so effects happen) or whether we have transcended that and have become wise, we are always within the realm of the All-Knowing and All-Mighty. (what Rumi calls 'presence'). Once we understand this part 3b seems obvious enough, especially with the help of the asterisked footnote. 
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While Rumi's work is quite obviously anchored in spirituality, what makes his poetry alluring is the use of different metaphors (the blind man's cane, the prison of forgetting, the banquet of wisdom...) to bring alive various aspects of it - if only to help the populace internalise spirituality through the reading of his works.

More next week, but in the meantime, we / I would love to hear from you, either here or within the facebook group!

Day 1: A Just-Finishing Candle

Day 1: A Just-Finishing Candle

A candle is made to become entirely flame.

In that annihilating moment it has no shadow.

It is nothing but a tongue of light describing a refuge.

Look at this just finishing candle stub

as someone who is finally safe from virtue and vice,

the pride and the shame we claim from those.

What do I make of this?

The beauty of Rumi is that we, each, make something out of his verse depending upon where we are in terms of life's circumstance, life's experience and wisdom. 

To me, the candle is I. I, not as in Parampal but as in the sense of self or ego - the sense of consciousness that separates me from others. I think that what Rumi is trying to say is that when the ego is annihilated or destroyed, what is left is pure brightness or a union of the individual with the universe. The 'refuge' that he talks about is the physical body that is illuminated by Universal Light when the ego is annihilated. And when does the ego cease to exist? When one accepts that one is charged with the energy of the larger Whole (...a candle is made to become entirely flame).

The 'just finishing' candle stub is the person who is maturing. As a person matures, he/she becomes wiser. Wisdom brings the ability to see things are they are without getting affected by them...deriving no pride nor feeling any shame from either virtue or vice.

What do you make of the poem? Let me know in the Comments section below! Always happy to learn from you.