Oh Lord, nourish me not with love but with the desire
for love. IBN ‘ARABÎ

Not only the thirsty seek the water,
the water as well seeks the thirsty. RÛMÎ

Ecstasy is a flame which springs up in the secret heart,
and appears out of longing. PAUL NWYIA

Open your hidden eyes and return to the root of the root
of your own self. RÛMÎ

The inner truth of desire is that it is a restive motion in
the heart in search of God. AL-QUSHAYRÎ

excerpts from "Travelling the Path Of Love  Sayings of Sufi Masters"

so much silence in the promise of a new
green and the heart of the city is waltzing
with never the same sun and I wear
my skin tinged with the impossible words you never speak
with the thoughts that run away from you towards
an unseen horizon; when you are not careful something
moves up and down drawing an infinity column (the infinite is just the super flow of everything into everything else inventing space and time)
when you are not careful your smile is beautiful
I want you to plant your soul in the soil of
my palms, my feet, into the earth of my bones,
into the hearing of my heart
light is a journey, darkness a story to tell

"Contentment is a synonym for loneliness, cool loneliness, settling down with cool loneliness. We give up believing that being able to escape our loneliness is going to bring any lasting happiness or joy or sense of well-being or courage or strength. Usually we have to give up this belief about a billion times, again and again making friends with our jumpiness and dread, doing the same old thing a billion times with awareness. Then without our even noticing, something begins to shift. We can just be lonely with no alternatives, content to be right here with the mood and texture of what’s happening."

"it allows us to finally discover a completely unfabricated state of being. Our habitual assumptions — all our ideas about how things are — keep us from seeing anything in a fresh, open way… We don’t ultimately know anything. There’s no certainty about anything. This basic truth hurts, and we want to run away from it. But coming back and relaxing with something as familiar as loneliness is good discipline for realizing the profundity of the unresolved moments of our lives. We are cheating ourselves when we run away from the ambiguity of loneliness."

"Cool loneliness allows us to look honestly and without aggression at our own minds. We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people think we want to be or ought to be. We give it up and just look directly with compassion and humor at who we are. Then loneliness is no threat and heartache, no punishment. Cool loneliness doesn’t provide any resolution or give us ground under our feet. It challenges us to step into a world of no reference point without polarizing or solidifying. This is called the middle way, or the sacred path of the warrior."

by Pema Chodron from "When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advise for Difficult Times"

this morning when I opened my eyes
the light was breathing the window had a pulse
as if I was a body with unmystified senses
as if I could see deeper in everything that surrounds me
perhaps a remembrance of how
difficult it was for me to be in the world
with an immense sensitivity to the slightest movement of life around me,
how wondeful to attune to the wind, the leaves, the cacophony of beautiful words and deeds, the harmony in the blinking of strangers, the sway of steps on the streets, the collapse of the waveforms of dreams that we called reality
how hard to have a mind that might understand eventually that truth is complicated or not for every creature on the walks of life.
my essence is vulnerability my strenghts is my weakness for my foolishness there is no cure
don't have to look in the mirror to recognize
my human face, your human face, their faces
late in the night when I close my eyes I see only people, the beauty of the world, the cosmos created through pain, how
the morning of the day I was born was there, and everything was already breathing before me and everything will be still spinning its mystery when this excess of life will rob a last breath from me. I know I will be watching the breath of light, how everything gets illuminated when the time is ripe

so many words and still
the essence is trapped
in the discreet quanta
in this autobiography
of milk in my tears

no wars to fight
nothing to prove
the ancient love will find me,
the unknown you
the right verbs
the earth of home
the cycle of life
in my dreams

the round present immerses me
in gratitude for all my selves,
the depth of coherence
the bottom of the sky
in this simple truth,
my heart is my home

pain loves the present tense
it loves gravity so that the clouds
are turned into geological strata
sometimes I use my hands like an anaesthetic
between right and wrong the pain dillema:
to feel or not to feel (the unknown)
we discover clever remedies or illusions
quiet cannery in the storehouse of flesh

it comes in circles mixtures all kind of names
it has rythm texture electric blackness
each unshed tear an orb of contraction
compulsive excavation of the void inside
sometimes I feel I have canyons of salt in my heart
on the edges of safety so much to learn about terror

this pain is a blind Robinson on Hope island
(with his bare hands he sets pyres in his heart)
was it pain that invented this language, these holy wars?
love you, hate you, nonsense, can't stand it anymore
I know my father lied to me that he doesn't feel pain

bodies in pain can't dream the water slide of life
that might take us further away into the night of day
time to say thank you, say farewell,
love everything that simply is
it is time to