Spiritual Void Of The 21st Century Man

We search this whole world for great untying

of what was wed to us with birth,

but it gets untied at dying.

We sleep beside a stream, thirsty.

Cursing and unlucky at our entire lives,

We finish up in a niche of a ruin,

Inches away from the treasures...

Rumi

_______

How will you know the difficulties of being human,
if you’re always flying off to blue perfection?
Where will you plant your grief-seeds?
We need ground to scrape and hoe,
not the sky of unspecified desire.

Rumi

_____________

Keep walking,
though there’s no place to get to.
Don’t try to see through
the distances…
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument!
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Rumi
_________


This is how you change
when you go to the orchard
where the heart opens.
You become
fragrance and the light
that burning oil gives off…
You’re walking alone without feet,
as river water does…
The taste of a wine that is bitter and sweet,
seen and unseen, neither wet nor dry,
like love reaching to touch…
Bend like the limb of a peach tree.
Tend those who need help.
Disappear three days with the moon…
You are the soul
and the medicine for what wounds the soul.
Rumi
______


This being human is a guest
house. Every morning
a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and attend them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture, still,
treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

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.

Welcome difficulty.
Learn the alchemy true human
beings know.
the moment you accept what troubles
you’ve been given, the door opens.

Welcome difficulty as a familiar
comrade. Joke with torment
brought by the Friend.

Sorrows are the rags of old clothes
and jackets that serve to cover,
and then are taken off.
That undressing,
and the beautiful
naked body
underneath
is the sweetness
that comes
after grief.
Rumi

Latin America's Rumi, the great Brazilian writer, Paulo Coelho writes in his universally acclaimed master piece, The Alchemist "..I learned that the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things. I learned that many alchemists realized their destinies, and wound up discovering the Soul of the World, the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Elixir of Life. But above all, I learned that these things are all so simple they could be written on the surface of an emerald.." 

Coelho's deep spiritual message must serve as an affirmation that we the so called "Civilized" modern Man of the 21st century spend most of our existence in the safety of our "Caves", as if we are trying to recreate the womb experience and deny the fact that we have already been born. The 'Mind-World' in mystical Sufism is called "Aina Khana/Palace of Mirror". For the mystics, the mind as a mirror is Man's clear reflection to other "Mirrors". Our mind will go to great extremes to protect its "Palace", even flirting with its greatest fear, the soul, in order to still be in full control of our existence. Alas, we the modern Man of 21st century still fail to comprehend the true meaning of the awesome "Mirror", and its mystical reflections at our disposals. We create our own problems and failures, and we become frustrated at our own inability to live in the daylight. And it is precisely through the realization of our inability that we punish ourselves by staying in the "Caves" of our failed creations, harboring and cherishing our fates as spiritual martyrs, in this short and transitory experience called life.

When your chest is free of your limiting ego,
Then you will see the ageless Love.
You can not see yourself without a mirror;
Look at Love, 
He is the brightest Mirror.
Rumi.