barriers

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.

Rumi

Photo:  Peter Bowers

taste of morning

Time's knife slides from the sheath,

as fish from where it swims.

Being closer and closer is the desire 

of the body. Don't wish for union!

There's a closeness beyond that. Why 

would God want a second God?  Fall in 

love in such a way that it frees you 

from any connecting. Love is the soul's 

light, the taste of morning, no me, no

we, no claim of being. These words 

are the smoke the fire gives off as it

absolves its defects, as eyes in silence,

tears, face. Love cannot be said.

Rumi

Translation: Coleman Barks

what we do

Let the beauty we love be what we do

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground 

~

There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground, 

there are a thousand ways to go home again.

Rumi

Photo:  Peter Bowers

community of the spirit

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.

Open your hands,

if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel

the 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 of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison

when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.

Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always

widening rings of being.

Rumi 

Translation: Coleman Barks 

Photo:  Peter  Bowers

spring

Spring overall.

But inside us there is another unity.

Behind each eye here,

one glowing weather.

Every forest branch moves differently in the breeze,

but as they sway, they connect at the roots.

Rumi

tr. Coleman Barks

Photo:  Peter Bowers

love window

There is some kiss we want
with our whole lives,
the touch of spirit on the body.

Seawater begs the pearl
to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately
it needs some wild darling.

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.





Rumi
photo:  Peter Bowers

love is ...

Love is what gives joy to creatures.

Love is what provides all sorts of happiness.

We were not born from women; love gave birth to us.

A hundred blessings and praises to our mothers ! 

Rumi 

Sade Helen Koskelo 

June 22, 1940 - March 9, 2019

where everything is music

Do not worry about saving these songs.
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it does not matter.

We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,

and even if the whole world's harp should burn up,
there will still be hidden instruments playing.

So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint and a spark.

This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.

Poems reach up like spindrift
and the edge of driftwood along the beach, wanting.

They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we cannot see.

Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the  spirits fly in and out.





Rumi
Photo:  Peter Bowers

Unmarked Boxes (excerpt)

God's joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box,

from cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flowerbed.

As roses, up from ground. 

Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish, 

now a cliff covered with vines, 

now a horse being saddled.

It hides within these, 

till one day it cracks them open.

Rumi

Photo:  Peter Bowers

out beyond ideas

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.

Rumi

We are...

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity.   We are pain
and what cures pain, both.  We are
the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.





Rumi
Photo:  Peter Bowers

If you love love...

If you love love,

look for yourself.

Rumi

The Book of Love

Photo:  Peter Bowers

One being inside all

Lovers, it is time
for the taste of fire.

Let sadness and your fears of death
sit in the corner and sulk.

The sky itself reels with love.
There is one being inside
all of us, one peace.

Poet, let every word tremble its wind bell.
Saddle the horse with great anticipation.

Flute notes are calling us into friendship.
Begin again.  Play the melody
all the way through this time.

Sun-presence floods over.
Quietness is an empty cup.

Accept that you
must hide your secret.










Rumi
Translation:  Coleman Barks
Photo:  Peter Bowers

Body Intelligence

There are guides
who can show you the way.
Use them.

But they will not satisfy your longing.
Keep wanting the connection with presence
with all your pulsing energy.

The throbbing vein
will take you further
than any thinking.

Muhammed said, Do not theorize
about essence.  All speculations
are just more layers of covering.
Human beings love coverings.

They think the designs on the curtains
are what is being concealed.

Observe the wonders as they occur around you.
Do not claim them.  Feel the artistry
moving through, and be silent.





Rumi
Photo:  Peter Bowers

dancing particles

Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?





Rumi
Photo:  Peter Bowers

Rumi love bites

Move into your own quietness.

...

This turning toward what you deeply love saves you.

...

A rose opens because she is the fragrance she loves.






Rumi
The Glance, Songs of Soul-Meeting
Photo:  Peter Bowers

Listening

What is the deep listening?  Sama is

a greeting from the secret ones inside

the heart, a letter.  The branches of 

your intelligence grow new leaves in

the wind of this listening.  The body

reaches a peace.  Rooster sound comes,

reminding you of your love for dawn.

The reed flute and singer's lips:  

the knack of how spirit breathes into

us becomes as simple and ordinary as 

eating and drinking.  The dead rise with

the pleasure of listening.  If someone 

can't hear a trumpet melody, sprinkle

dirt on his head and declare him dead.  

Listen and feel the beauty of your

separation, the unsayable absence.  

There's a moon inside every human being.

Learn to be companions with it.  Give

more of your life to this listening.  As 

brightness is to time, so you are to

the one who talks to the deep ear in 

your chest.  I should sell my tongue

and buy a thousand ears when that

one steps near and begins to speak.

Rumi

Translated by Coleman Barks

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Mercy

A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth.
A courageous man went and rescued the bear.
There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save
anyone who cries out. Like Mercy itself,
they run toward the screaming.

And they can't be bought off.
If you were to ask one of those, "Why did you come
so quickly?" he or she would say, "Because I heard
your helplessness."

Where lowland is,
that's where water goes. All medicine wants
is pain to cure.

And don't just ask for one mercy.
Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.
Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton
of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music.

Push the hair out of your eyes.
Blow the phlegm from your nose,
and from your brain.

Let the wind breeze through.
Leave no residue in yourself from that bilious fever.
Take the cure for impotence,
that your manhood may shoot forth,
and a hundred new beings come of your coming.

Tear the binding from around the foot
of your soul, and let it race around the track
in front of the crowd. Loosen the knot of greed
so tight on your neck. Accept your new good luck.

Give your weakness
to one who helps.

Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.
A nursing mother, all she does
is wait to hear her child.

Just a little beginning-whimper,
and she's there.

God created the child, that is your wanting,
so that it might cry out, so that milk might come.

Cry out! Don't be stolid and silent
with your pain. Lament! And let the milk
of loving flow into you.

The hard rain and wind
are ways the cloud has
to take care of us.

Be patient.
Respond to every call
that excites your spirit.

Ignore those that make you fearful
and sad, that degrade you
back toward disease and death.








Rumi
Photo:  Peter Bowers

beauty

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.

Rumi

Translated by Coleman Barks

Photo:  Peter Bowers

this we have now

This we have now 

is not imagination. 

This is not grief or joy. 

Not a judging state, 

or an elation, 

or sadness. 

Those come and go. 

This is the presence 

that doesn't.

Rumi

Translation:  Coleman Barks 

Photo:  Peter Bowers