Genre: Poetry

Lightning is not
guidance. Lightning

simply tells the clouds to weep.

If your love
has contracted into anger, the

atmosphere itself feels threatening, but when you’re
expansive and clear, no matter

what the weather, you’re in an open windy field with friends.
Many people travel as far as Syria

and Iraq and meet only hypocrites. Others go all the way to
India and see only people buying and selling.

Others travel to Turkestan and China to discover those
countries are full of cheats

and sneak thieves. You always see the qualities that live
in you.

Meanwhile the third fish, the dumb one, was
jumping about in great agitation,

trying to escape with agility and cleverness. The net closed
around his thrashing, and as he lay

in the terrible frying-pan bed, he thought, “If I get out of
this, I’ll never live in the limits

of a lake again. Next time, the ocean! I’ll make the
infinite my home.” Such a stated

intention must not always be taken seriously! There are
those who cannot do what they say

they’re going to. They lack the quality called spiritual
reason. Seized by a net

of painful circumstances, they cry out and imagine how they
might have acted, but if

the situation goes away, they forget and go back to the
lake of comfortable pleasure,

a moth with singed wings returning to the candle.

Muhammad said, “Love of
one’s country is part of

the faith,” but don’t take that literally. Your real
“country” is where you’re

heading, not where you are.

We rush around enthusiastic
with some new project, because

we can’t yet see what’s wrong with it. If we saw, we’d quit
the project, but if we did

that, we’d never feel the nature of its wrongness, so it’s
good we’re blinded for a while; that

helps us learn! And don’t get caught in repentance.
Distraction and regret

are addictions.

Talking to someone
sleepy is like
drawing pictures
on water with your finger.

A true pilgrim reaches

the Kaaba every second, again and again. There is a
traveling that has no long

or short.

But everything on this plane is a flawed
metaphor. Here’s another:

at night a light comes on in each house, a lamp with six
wicks, the five senses and

the sixth, which holds the five. The fuel for these is food
and sleep. Without those they

go out, and the lamps seem to be seeking death, the way they
burn.

Spirit
is the art of making what’s

blocked start moving again. When your body dies, give
it to the death angel,

Israfil. If your heart feels numb and metallic, walk out
into the sun, or whatever

the mystery is that makes your inner spring well up.

A candle as

it diminishes explains, Gathering
more and more is not the way. Burn,

become light and heat and help.
Melt.