Rumi: The Very Center of Your Heart

All photos are by Molly

Timeless Quotes from Rumi

on Beauty, Wisdom, and Love

 

The very center of your heart 

is where life begins —  

the most beautiful place on Earth.

 

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.

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.

On a day
when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.
Today is such a
day.

 

 

The breezes at dawn have 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!

 

This being human is a guest house. 

Every morning is a new arrival. 

A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary 

awareness comes as an unexpected visitor...

Welcome and entertain them all. 

Treat each guest honorably. 

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. 

 

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. 

 

I was dead, then alive.
Weeping, then laughing.

The power of love came into me,
and I became fierce like a lion,
then tender like the evening star. 

 

Very little grows on jagged rocks. 

Be ground. Be crumbled, so wild flowers will 

come up where you are.

God turns you from one feeling to another 

and teaches by means of opposites 

so that you will have two wings 

to fly, not one.

 

You were born with potential.
You were born with goodness and trust. 

You were born with ideals and dreams. 

You were born with greatness.
You were born with wings.
You are not meant for crawling, so don't.
You have wings.
Learn to use them and fly. 

 

Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. 

If it were always a fist or always stretched open, 

you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in 

every small contracting and expanding, 

the two as beautifully balanced and 

coordinated as birds' wings. 

 

These pains you feel are messengers. 

Listen to them. 

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.

What you seek is seeking you.

Come, come, whoever you are. 

Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. 

It doesn't matter. 

Ours is not a caravan of despair. 

Come, even if you have broken your vows 

a thousand times. 

Come, yet again , come , come.

 

And you? When will you begin that long journey

 into yourself?

Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop.

The cure for pain is in the pain.

The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.

Raise your words, not voice. 

It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

 

Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull 

of that which you truly love.

 

Let the beauty we love be what we do. 

There are hundreds of ways to 

kneel and kiss the ground.

 

Moonset over the Pacific

Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon;
How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.

At night, I open the window
and ask the moon to come
and press its face against mine.
Breathe into me.
Close the language-door
and open the love-window.
The moon won't use the door,
only the window.

The moon stays bright when it doesn't avoid the night.

Anyone who knows me, should learn to know me again;
For I am like the Moon,
you will see me with new face everyday.

I am your moon and your moonlight too
I am your flower garden and your water too
I have come all this way, eager for you
Without shoes or shawl
I want you to laugh
To kill all your worries
To love you
To nourish you.

 

That which God said to the rose, 

and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, 

He said to my heart, 

and made it a hundred times more beautiful.

 

I will soothe you and heal you,
I will bring you roses.
I too have been covered with thorns.

 

Lovers find secret places
inside this violent world
where they make transactions
with beauty.

 

Beauty surrounds us.

The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart.

 

 

You are not a drop in the ocean. 

You are the entire ocean in a drop. 

 

You wander from room to room
Hunting for the diamond necklace
That is already around your neck!

 

Your heart is the size of an ocean.

Go and find yourself in its depths. 

 

Do you know what you are?
You are a manuscript of a divine letter.
You are a mirror reflecting a noble face.
This universe is not outside of you.
Look inside yourself;
everything that you want,
you are already that. 

 

Give up to grace. 

The ocean takes care of each 

wave 'til it gets to shore. 

You need more help than you know. 

 

Only from the heart can you touch the sky.

 

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing

and rightdoing there is a field.

I'll meet you there. 

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.  

Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make any sense.

 

Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, 

stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a 

secret way of being with the mystery, 

unique and not to be judged. 

 

They say there is a doorway 

from heart to heart, 

but what is the use of a door 

when there are no walls?

Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot. 

Seek the path that demands 

your whole being.

 

Remember. 

The way you make love is the way 

God will be with you. 

 

When you feel a peaceful joy, 

that's when you are near truth. 

 

Wherever you are, whatever you do, 

be in love.

 

Reason is powerless in the expression of love. 

 

This is a subtle truth. 

Whatever you love you are.

 

Love the bridge between you and everything. 

 

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. 

Help someone's soul heal. 

Walk out of your house like a shepherd.