The invitation

The Invitation

(Oriah Mountian Dreamer)

It doesnt interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your hearts longing.

It doesnt interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesnt interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by lifes betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to
be careful
be realistic
remember the limitations of being human.

It doesnt interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
Yes.

It doesnt interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesnt interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesnt interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears - Glenn Clark

Life Quotes - Unfoldment of the heart

By unfoldment of heart

"The facts can be put into words but not the truth, for God is truth, the soul is truth, the real self of man is truth."

"We generally confuse truth with fact, and we often use the word fact for truth. When we look at it from the mystic's point of view we find that words are too intricate ever to explain what is truth. ... Truth is that which cannot be pointed out, because all things that can be compared have their opposite, but neither God nor truth has an opposite. Names are to point out forms, and words are to distinguish one thing from another, while definitions come from the pairs of opposites or at least from differences. That which is all-pervading and is in all things and beings, that which every word explains and yet no word can explain, is God and is truth."

(...) "And truth can neither be studied nor taught nor learned; it is to be touched, it is to be realized; and it can be realized by the unfoldment of the heart."

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears - Glenn Clark

Life Quotes - Opening of the heart

If we could live our lifes bases on this principle we could become one of the happiest man on earths, life full of joys and freedom.

Stepping Into Freedom

"When we can acknowledge and accept our own shadows, our negative self-judgment lightens. When our negative self-judgment lightens, our negative judgment of others lightens simultaneously, and compassion for the pain of others arises."

Joan Hoeberichts

You Open Yourself

"When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid. You're able to keep your eyes open, your heart open, and your mind open. And you notice when you get caught up in prejudice, bias, and aggression. You develop an enthusiasm for no longer watering those negative seeds, from now until the day you die. And, you begin to think of your life as offering endless opportunities to start to do things differently."

Pema Chödrön

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears - Glenn Clark

He Said

السعى لاكتشاف السر - من أنا؟

Today poem is by Rumi, notice what he said at the end of the poem where he claimed that the only way to benefit from this life is by keeping true to ourselves. We cannot be true to ourselves unless we know who we really are. This require us to know our true identity, and our true life purpose in this world. And yet when come to providing the answer to this questions, as usual Rumi can only give a vague idea about them...it is up to us to really search for the answer.

Those who seek will find them..وَالَّذِينَ جَاهَدُوا فِينَا لَنَهْدِيَنَّهُمْ سُبُلَنَا وَإِنَّ اللَّهَ لَمَعَ الْمُحْسِنِينَ - And those who strive in Our (cause),- We will certainly guide them to our Paths: For verily Allah is with those who do right. (Al-Ankabut: 69).

If we cannot find the answer to it, it only meant we are not serious enough, not hard enough with our searching and pursuit for the answer. Only those wo really seek will find them. Those who found them will remain silent and say very little..except to those who is ready to hear the truth.

As narrated by Abu Huraira:  I have memorized two kinds of knowledge from Allah's Apostle . I have propagated one of them to you and if I propagated the second, then my pharynx (throat) would be cut (i.e. killed). Source from here: Volume 1, Book 3, Number 121:

The second type of knowledge is the secret knowledge, knowledge of the path to know our trueself. A road that could only be traveled by the brave one with a fearless heart.

HE SAID

He said, "Who is at my door?"
I said, "Your humble servant."
He said, "What business do you have?"
I said, "To greet you, 0 Lord."
He said, "How long will you journey on?"
I said, "Until you stop me."
He said, "How long will you boil in the fire?"
I said, "Until I am pure.
"This is my oath of love.
For the sake of love
I gave up wealth and position."
He said, "You have pleaded your case
but you have no witness."
I said, "My tears are my witness;
the pallor of my face is my proof.'
He said, "Your witness has no credibility;
your eyes are too wet to see."
I said, "By the splendor of your justice
my eyes are clear and faultless."
He said, "What do you seek?"
I said, "To have you as my constant friend."
He said, "What do you want from me?"
I said, "Your abundant grace."
He said, "Who was your companion on the journey?
I said, "The thought of you, 0 King."
He said, "What called you here?"
I said, "The fragrance of your wine."
He said, "What brings you the most fulfillment? "
I said, "The company of the Emperor."
He said, "What do you find there?"
I said, "A hundred miracles."
He said, "Why is the palace deserted?"
I said, "They all fear the thief."
He said, "Who is the thief?"
I said, "The one who keeps me from -you.
He said, "Where is there safety?"
I said, "In service and renunciation. "
He said, "What is there to renounce?"
I said, "The hope of salvation."
He said, "Where is there calamity?"
I said, "In the presence of your love."
He said, "How do you benefit from this life?"
I said, "By keeping true to myself
Now it is time for silence.
If I told you about His true essence
You would fly from your self and be gone,
and neither door nor roof could hold you back!

Poem by: Maulana Jallaluddin Rumi
Source of picture is from here

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears - Glenn Clark

اَلْطَرِيْقُ اِلَى الله - The way to God

اَلْطَرِيْقُ اِلَى الله هُو كَثِيرُ - وَلَكِنْ أَقْصَرُ وَأَسْهَلُ هُوَ خِدَمَةُ الْآخِرِيْنَ ، وَلَا يَزْعُجُ الْآخِرِيْنَ ، وَجَعَلَ الآخِرِيْنَ سَعِدًاء

One day a man asked a sheikh how to reach God. “the Way to God” the sheikh replied, “are many as they are created beings.  But the shortest and easiest is to serve others, not to bother others, and to make others happy.

If you wish to draw near to God, you must seek God in the hearts of others. You should speak well of all, whether present or absent. If you seek to be a light to guide others, then, like the sun, you must show the same face to all. To bring joy to a single heart is better than to build many shrines for worship, and to enslave one soul by kindness is worth more than the setting free of a thousand slaves. The true man of God sits in the midst of his fellowmen, and rises up and cats and sleeps and buys and sells and gives and takes in the bazaars, and marries and has social intercourse with others, and yet is never for one moment forgetful of God.

The above is from the saying of Abu Sa'id, a great sufi and poets, Shaikh Abu-Said was one of the earlier Sufi poets. He lived more than two centuries before Jelaluddin Rumi yet, like Rumi, much of his mysticism follows a similar path of annihilation in divine Love.

From my own small experience and knowledge there is a great truth in what has been said. Many others have said about the same things, for example Hazrat Khwaja Moinuddin Chishty said "A sin committed does not harm an individual so much as looking down upon one's own fellow human beings".

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears - Glenn Clark

The question of destiny ?

The question of destiny is a very complicated matter to understand ..

However, I like and adopted the view of Syaikh Ibnu Atho'illah, the author of a famous book "Kitabul-Hikam", on this subject, he said: الغافل اذا اصبح ينظر ماذا يفعل، والعاقل ينظر ماذا يفعل الله به

Those people who fail to fail to understand that the true meaning of tauhid which is that everything is running according to terms destine by God, in the morning is worring about what he should be doing that day whereas a person with sound understanding of tauhid would see only what Allah had destined for him that day.

ابن عجيبة said in his kitab إيقاظ الهمم شرح متن الحكم:
الغافل هو الجاهل بالله ولو كثر ذكره باللسان والعاقل هو العارف بالله ولو قل له ذكر اللسان

الغافل - are those who are do not know Allah even though they do a lot of zikrullah with their tongue whereas العاقل are those who know Allah even though they do less of zikrullah with their tongue..

وقول عمر بن عبد العزيز : أصبحت وما لي سرور إلا فى مواقع القدر
And the saying of Umar bin Abdul Aziz: In the morning i would rejoice with nothing except with what Allah had destined for me.

May God opened our hearts to the proper understanding of destiny.. It is most important key to peacefull living..

(p/s : I am testing my new found skill - typing with arabic keyboard and at the same time enhancing my knowledge of arabic..)

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears - Glenn Clark

Saved by a Poem

Kim Rosen, author of "Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words" speaks about loving -- and fearing -- poetry and how poems can be a powerful medicine to heal and transform individuals and our world.

Many of the great Sufi mystics in the past such as Rumi, Attar, Hafiz, Yunus Amre, Saadi, Mahmud Shabistari,Ibn Arabi, Omar Khayyam and many others have been able to encapsulate and share their spiritual experiences through them. Many of the most truly important sufi message and secret are reveal through them. Reading these sufi poems can uplift our own consciouness.

However some of this "life secret" could only be understood with the help of the wise and enlightened being.

Many of these poems could be found on the internet. One of such site is The Poets Seeres.

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears - Glenn Clark

Kindness

----Kindess-----
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears - Glenn Clark

Presence

--- PRESENCE ----
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.

It's dawn, Husam,
here in the splendor of coral,
inside the Friend, the simple truth
of what Hallaj said.

What else could human beings want?

When grapes turn to wine,
they're wanting
this.

When the nightsky pours by,
it's really a crowd of beggars,
and they all want some of this!

This
that we are now
created the body, cell by cell,
like bees building a honeycomb.

The human body and the universe
grew from this, not this
from the universe and the human body.

--Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears - Glenn Clark