Moving Water

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river

moving in you, a joy.

When actions come from another section, the feeling

disappears. Don’t let others lead you. They may be blind or, worse, vultures.

Reach for the rope of God. And what is that? Putting aside self-will.

Because of willfulness people sit in jail, the trapped bird’s wings are tied,

fish sizzle in the skillet.

The anger of police is willfulness. You’ve seen a magistrate

inflict visible punishment. Now see the invisible.
If you could leave your selfishness, you would see how you’ve
been torturing your soul. We are born and live inside black water in a well.
How could we know what an open field of sunlight is? Don’t insist on going where
you think you want to go. Ask the way to the spring.

Your living pieces will form a harmony. There is a moving palace that floats in the air with balconies and clear water flowing through, infinity everywhere, yet contained

under a single tent.

——-

There is a community of the spirit.

Join it, and feel the delight

of walking in the noisy street

and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,

and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes

to see with the other eye.

From Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks
———–
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.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.