One Name Is Better Than Two

The name Beloved is a shell, and buried deep within the Beloved is the face of the Lover.  The Beloved is only the veil.  That is why one name is better than two, Beloved.

The Story of Sapphire and Arion: Arion's Madness

Heaps of shame was Arion's baggage.  Sapphire's image played as a mirage in the desert of his roamings.  No one understood his madness.  He was mocked and ridiculed by his peers.  Their voices fell deaf on his ear.  He sketched her image in the likeness of a jewel out of his heart's longings.  Arion heard the wind whisper her name and saw her reflection in the glow of the moon.  What was their destiny?  Where would fate lead the Lovers? He found himself drowning in a world only he could understand.  She was his world; the stars, the sun, and the moon were adorned for the two Lovers.

Die Your Own Death

He who remains a stranger in this world and wanders, restless as the moon at night, will find peace.  Man is as lightning, born to die, not to seek permanence in the house of suffering.  Do not settle down to rest here, where everything perishes; you will only regret it later.  But if you die your own death in this life, tearing yourself away from the world which is a demon with the face of an angel, you will share eternal life.  You are your fate; your death, your life.  Good will be joined to good, evil to evil.  The echo shouts your secret from the mountain-tops, revealing only what you confided yourself.

Reference~ The Story of Layla and Majnun by Nizami

Balm for My Heart

My heart aches.  Soothe my heart God with your balm.  Man's bitterness towards me exhausts me.  I need rest.  My heart can't bare man's harsh words against you.  They are like beasts foaming at the mouth.  They delight in my anguish.  My days are long.  The night offers some relief when I am free from this body.

Kahlil Gibran and May Ziadah in Love

May Ziadah was a regular contributor to leading newspapers and periodicals of her age.  Her work as a reviewer of new literary work introduced her to Kahlil Gibran, whose influence on her thought and style can be seen everywhere in her works.  Although the two had only known each other through correspondence, a fascinating literary and love relationship came to exist between them:  they seemed to have achieved a harmony and understanding rare even among people who are more intimately connected.

Her home was in Cairo, her interest and passion was in the Woman’s Emancipation Movement.  Her real achievement has been in the art of the essay.  She is the most significant woman essayist in the Arabic literature of the first half of the 20^th century.

Kahlil and May were both Lebanese writers living in different parts of the world.  They knew one another solely from the letters they exchanged and from each other’s work; they never met except in their imaginations and dreams, through the roaming of their spirits in search of eternal reality and of each other as kindred souls.

The love letters between Kahlil and May began in 1912 and continued right up to Kahlil’s death in 1931.  At first the letters took the form of literary correspondence.  The relationship changed from mutual admiration to a firm friendship, than to the final admission of love.  Kahlil and May were united in a Sufi yearning and striving towards the “God Self.”  The “Blue Flame,” which Kahlil used as the symbol of God in man, also became the symbol of his eternal love for May.  The two lovers joined in a spiritual procession towards the Blue Flame, the eternal flame of reality.  For him love needed no words to express itself because it was a serene hymn heard through the silence of the night; the mist and essence of all things.

Kahlil felt that man’s only path to self-realization lay in Love.  In his first book, The Madman, the only sane person able to remove his masks and look reality straight in the face is considered a madman by his fellows.  In May he found in one person the incarnation of everything that his soul yearned for. The sketches and drawings on the sides of many of his letters to her show how much at ease he felt with her, and how near to him she was.

~Great Pain is great purification.

  Reference~Gibran Love Letters

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen- Crazy Man

I am a crazy man who has come here.  Very few people have the real obsession I have.  This total craziness of a fool is developing in a few people.  God has provided this explanation.  He has said, "One who perceives Me with complete trust will be a fool in this world.  He will appear to be completely crazy.  Such a person has only one obsession.  He is crazy for divine wisdom, he is crazy for Me."  Such a person gives up the experiences of the world and falls into this craziness.

Only if one becomes such a fool will God become the physician who supports and assists him.  Only God can take care of a person with this obsession.  The world, hell, and Satan can take care of intellectual craziness.

Bawa lived that of which he spoke.  He treated all lives as his own life and his own life proved the reality that a human being can be annihilated in God.  He served the wisdom that arises from intimacy with the Divine, to people of all races, classes, and religions without distinction.  He died on December 8, 1986.

~Man lives within God; God lives within man.

Reference~ To Die Before Death The Sufi Way of Life

Detachment

Detachment serves the birth of God in the soul.  True detachment is nothing other than for the spirit to stand as immovable against whatever may chance to it of joy and sorrow, honor, shame, and disgrace, as a mountain of lead stands before a breath of wind.  This capacity to bring God to birth invests individuality with huge creativity; it is the deepest longing of the human heart.

Reference~ Meister Eckhart, Selections from His Essential Writings

The Story of Sapphire and Arion:Sapphire's Demons

Sapphire's demons pressed sorely on her.  They terrorized and tortured her at night.  She would twist about in her bed but Sapphire was powerless over them.  They wanted to steal her Light.  Sapphire was in such anguish she would cry out to God.  The demons mocked her and laughed cruelly at her attempts to free herself.  Sapphire's faith in God angered the beasts even more.  They pressed upon her harder. 
She sang praises to the Lord and glorified His name until the demons darkness dimmed to a point of light.  Exhausted from the battle- she knew this was one victory but many more demons would come for her Light.  Her battle wasn't over. It had just begun.

Your Wine

You enter my abode and bring your wine.  Your music beats like a drum.  Only the Heart in tune hears.  I become drunk and foolish.  Lost in this love play of longing when your absent and great pleasure when your near.  My door will remain open for all of Eternity.  Just bring your wine my Friend.

My Letter To The Troops- No.4

From Journal Entry 7/31/2012

Dear Sir or Madam,

When I discovered Rumi I knew I had found a treasure.  Rumi describes the vast regions of the heart that one must explore when one is on the path to Divine Love.  There is madness, elation, and revelation on the journey.  At times one feels deep despair, utter hopelessness, and other times pure ectasy.  Rumi has found a way into Love and through his writing he leaves the reader with a glimpse of Eternity.
Like Rumi, I have fallen in love with Love.  It is my sincere hope that other pilgrims of Love will stay on the path to Divine Love.  Only love can dissolve the hate in this world.  Love never dies, it transforms the world around you.

God Bless,

Madison Meadows

P.S.  Enclosed is Rumi's Parable, The Serpent

   A wise man was riding by at the moment when a serpent entered the mouth of a sleeping man.  The horseman saw it, hurried to try to scare the serpent away, but it was too late.  His vast intelligence revealed to him what he had to do: he gave the sleeper several fierce blows with a club, which made him wake up and run away and hide under a tree.  Rotten apples from the tree lay on the ground; the horseman cried out, “Eat them at once!” and gave the man so many apples to eat that they tumble out of his mouth.

   Why are you attacking me like this?”  the unfortunate man kept howling.  “What did I do to you?  If you have a fatal grudge against me, strike me once with your sword and kill me!  How terrible was the moment I came into your sight!  Happy is the man who has never seen your face!”

   Every time the man went on to pronounce a new curse, the horseman went on beating him, saying, “Keep running!”  Blows rained down on the man and he ran and ran, sometimes falling on the ground.  He was exhausted, worn out; his face and feet were covered with a thousand wounds.  Until nightfall, the horseman made him run in all directions, until at last a vomiting possessed him, caused by bile from the apples he had eaten.  Everything he had eaten, good or bad, spewed out of his mouth, including the serpent.  When he saw the serpent leap out of his body, he fell to his knees before the holy man; his sufferings abandoned him the moment he grasped the full horror of the long black snake.

   “How could I have known it?” he gasped to the horseman.  “You are the Gabriel of Divine Mercy!  I was dead; you gave me back life.  You looked after me as mothers do their children.  Happy is the man who sees your face or who appears suddenly before your house!  Don’t punish me for what I said; it was my madness speaking!  If I had known anything of what you were up to, how could I have said such stupid words?”

   The horseman replied, “If I had given you any idea of the danger you were in, you would have died of a heart attack; if I had described the characteristics of the snake, terror would have made you faint and die.  Didn’t Mohammed say, “If I described openly the enemy in your souls, even the hearts of the brave would be shattered.”  Shattered in this way, a person would not continue on his Path or bother about any work and in his heart neither perseverance in prayer would remain, nor any strength in his body for fasting and ritual prayer.  He would become helpless like a mouse before a cat; he would grow crazed like a lamb stalked by a wolf.  No power to complete his plans would remain in him.  This is why I took care of you without saying anything.  If I had spoken to you about the snake, you wouldn’t have been able to eat what you had to, and so you wouldn’t have been able to vomit it out.  I heard your insults and continued doing what I had to do:  I prayed continually under my breath, ‘Lord save this man!’  I did not have permission to speak of the reason for what I was doing, and it was not in my power to abandon you.  Because of the grief in my heart, I said continually what the Prophet said at the battle of Ohod when he was wounded, ‘Guide my people, Lord; they know nothing.’”

   The man who had been saved from so much misery fell to his knees and cried out to the horseman, “You are my joy, my good luck, my treasure; God will reward you as you deserve!  The poor being I am cannot know how to thank you.  God will thank you, my guide:  I do not have the power to do so.”

   I have told this parable to illustrate the “enmity” of the wise and to show that their “poison” is the satisfaction of the soul.

Reference~ Teachings of Rumi by Andrew Harvey

A Jar of Grief

A jar of grief and sorrow contains my heart.  Enemy of mine please pick up my jar and break it!  I want presence!  I want to soar to great heights.  Don't let this world trap me with its illusions.  Set my heart free and it will grow wings and soar beyond this world.