Whatever you love, you are

If you want money more than anything,
you'll be bought and sold.

If you have a greed for food,
you'll be a loaf of bread.

This is a subtle truth:
whatever you love, you are.

- Rumi

When was I less by dying?

I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?

Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar
With angels blest; but even from angelhood
I must pass on: all except God doth perish.
When I have sacrificed my angel-soul,
I shall become what no mind e'er conceived.

Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence
Proclaims in organ tones, To Him we shall return.

-Rumi

When our soul is asleep to God

The more awake one is to the material world,
the more one is asleep to spirit.
When our soul is asleep to God,
other wakefulness closes the door of Divine grace.

- Rumi

The saints of the world

The saints come to the rescue of this world when hearing from everywhere the moans of the oppressed. They run towards them like God's mercy. These fortresses against weakness, these doctors of hidden disease, are pure love, pure justice, pure mercy; like God they are unstained and impregnable.

-Rumi

What you do comes back in the same form

You are cold, but you expect kindness.
What you do comes back in the same form.
God is compassionate, but if you plant barley,
don't expect to harvest wheat.

- Rumi

'There is no room for Me and Thee'

"One went to the door of the Beloved and
knocked. A voice asked, 'Who is there?'
He answered, 'It is I.'
The voice said, 'There is no room for Me and Thee.'
The door was shut.
After a year of solitude and deprivation he returned and knocked.
A voice from within asked, 'Who is there?'
The man said, 'It is Thee.'
The door was opened for him."

-Jelaluddin Rumi

Stamped with the seal of detachment

As long as you have an "I"
you won't be allowed in.
Once you are annihilated
you will be treasured like the apple of the eye;
Once you are purified from the two worlds,
you will be stamped with the seal of detachment.

- Rumi

Seek to ce cooked by the Fire

If your knowledge of fire has been turned
to certainty by words alone,
then seek to be cooked by the fire itself.
Don't abide in borrowed certainty.
There is no real certainty until you burn;
if you wish for this, sit down in the fire.

- Rumi

Non-existence is the refuge

To experience the day of Resurrection,
first you must die.
This is why everyone has taken the wrong direction,
for they fear non-existence
while, in reality, it is the refuge.

- Rumi

"In this house of disappointment"

We don't have to follow
the pressure-flow of wanting.
We can be led by the guide.

Wishes may or may not come true
in this house of disappointment.

Let's push the door open
together and leave.

- Rumi

Gamble everything for love

Gamble everything for love, if you're a true human being.

If not, leave this gathering.

Half-heartedness doesn't reach into majesty. You set out to find God, but then you keep stopping for long periods at meanspirited roadhouses.

- Rumi

When self-interest appears, virtue hides

Anger and lust make a man squint; they
cloud the spirit so it strays from truth.
When self-interest appears, virtue hides:
a hundred veils rise between the heart
and the eye.

- Rumi