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Love is complicated.
But then I read Rumi, and I feel it’s so simple.
I read his words over and over. I delve into their hidden meanings. I look beyond letters and try to understand the love Rumi talks about.
This love is not perfect.
It’s uncertain.
It’s painful at times, but surely rewarding.
It’s egoless.
Humble.
Shy.
When I read Rumi’s poems, I feel I still have a lot of inner work to do.
I feel I still have a long way to go. I still need time and experiences and thousands of ups and downs to maybe comprehend that love goes far beyond bodies and presence. I still need at least 20 lifetimes to maybe grasp the power of love.
To love without ego, with faith, with openness, with awareness, is not easy, but it’s doable.
If you’ve loved and lost, read this. It will empower you.
If you’re not sure how to love your partner, your pet, your mother or father, your friend, yourself, read this. It will pave the way for you.
If you want to understand love—just a little bit—read this. It might teach you something.
Please, read this.
No expectations
A spirit that lives in this world
and does not wear the shirt of love,
such an existence is a deep disgrace.
Be foolishly in love,
because love is all there is.
There is no way into presence
except through a love exchange.
If someone asks, But what is love?
answer, Dissolving the will.
True freedom comes to those
who have escaped the questions
of freewill and fate.
Love is an emperor.
The two worlds play across him.
He barely notices their tumbling game.
Love and lover live in eternity.
Other desires are substitutes
for that way of being.
How long do you lay embracing a corpse?
Love rather the soul, which cannot be held.
Anything born in spring dies in the fall,
but love is not seasonal.
(Read the full poem here.)
One Swaying Being
Love is not condescension, never that, nor books,
nor any marking on paper, nor what people say of each other.
Love is a tree with branches reaching into eternity,
and roots set deep in eternity, and no trunk.
Have you seen it? The mind cannot. Your desiring cannot.
The longing you feel for this loves comes from inside you.
When you become the friend,
your longing will be as the man in the ocean
who holds to a piece of wood.
Eventually wood, man, and ocean
become one swaying being,
Shams Tabriz, the secret of God.
~
AUTHOR: ELYANE YOUSSEF
IMAGE: MUHAMMEDSALAH_/INSTAGRAM
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