When Love Meets Pain, It Turns Into Medicine

This compilation of wise and healing quotes from Rumi can provide nourishment for these times and all times. There is so much to be grieving now. May we be tender, compassionate, and loving with ourselves and others. May we cultivate the skills of the alchemist, remembering that when love meets pain, it turns into medicine. Blessings to all... ♥ Molly

 

Cry Out in Your Weakness 

A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth.

A courageous man went and rescued the bear.
There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save
anyone who cries out. Like Mercy itself,
they run toward the screaming.

And they can’t be bought off.
If you were to ask one of those, “Why did you come
so quickly?” He or she would say, “Because I heard
your helplessness.”

Where lowland is,
that’s where water goes. All medicine wants
is pain to cure.

And don’t just ask for one mercy.
Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.
Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton
of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music. . . .

Give your weakness
to One Who Helps.

Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.
A nursing mother, all she does
is wait to hear her child.

Just a little beginning-whimper,
and she’s there.

God created the child, that is, your wanting,
so that it might cry out, so that milk might come.

Cry out! Don’t be stolid and silent
with your pain. Lament! And let the milk
of Loving flow into you.

The hard rain and wind
are ways the cloud has
to take care of us.

Be patient.
Respond to every call
that excites your spirit.

Ignore those that make you fearful
and sad, that degrade you
back toward disease and death.

* * * * *  

The Guest House

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 entertain 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.

* * * * *

 The Wound Is the Place Where the Light Enters You

I said: what about my eyes?
He said: Keep them on the road.

I said: What about my passion?
He said: Keep it burning.

I said: What about my heart?
He said: Tell me what you hold inside it?

I said: Pain and sorrow.

He said: Stay with it. The wound is the place

where the Light enters you.

* * * * * 

My Heart Is So Small

My heart is so small

it's almost invisible.

How can You place

such big sorrows in it?

"Look," He answered,

"your eyes are even smaller,

yet they behold the world."

 

* * * * * 

The Divine Within My Heart

I looked in temples, churches and mosques.

But I found the Divine within my heart.

* * * * *

Don't Go Back To Sleep

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the

doorsill where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

 

* * * * * 

Sorrow Prepares You For Joy

Sorrow prepares you for joy. 

It violently sweeps everything out of your house, 

so that new joy can find space to enter. 

It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough 

of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow

in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, 

so that new roots hidden beneath have room 

to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, 

far better things will take their place.

 

* * * * * 

Your Heart Knows the Way.

Run In That Direction.

 

Would you become a pilgrim on the road of love? 

The first condition is that you make yourself 

 humble as dust and ashes.

 

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely 

to seek and find all the barriers within yourself 

that you have built against it.

 

Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot. 

Seek the path that demands your whole being.

 

Everyone has been made for some particular work, 

and the desire for that work has been 

put in every heart.

 

You have to keep breaking your

heart until it opens.

 

Our greatest strength lies in the gentleness 

and tenderness of our heart.

 

Be certain that in the religion of 

Love there are no believers and unbelievers. 

LOVE embraces all.

 

Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull 

of that which you truly love.

 

Love is the bridge between you and everything. 

 

When you seek love with all your heart you 

shall find its echo in the universe.

 

The whole universe is contained within 

a single human being — you.

 

You are not a drop in the ocean. 

You are the entire ocean, in a drop.

 

Your heart is the size of an ocean. 

Go find yourself in its hidden depths.