by Rumi/Coleman Barks
The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.
Hi Lavina,
Beautiful. I found among all my old quotes this one, it is a North American Indian poem, I just love it and it connects so well with what you quoted here.
Now you will feel no rain,
For each of you will be shelter to the other.
Now you will feel no cold,
For each of you will be warmth to the other.
Now there is only Oneness for you,
For each of you will be companion to the other.
Now you are two bodies,
But there is only One life before you.
Isn’t romantic love a beautiful thing.
But the very fact that it has an angel (Anael, or god, Venus) shows it is not freedom.
It is hard to talk about this in english, as there is no different word for love (agape) and romantic “love” (eros).
I wonder if using the word of “love” for romance is appropriate. If we compare the two … love (agape) is selflessness, understanding, calm, wisdom, forgiveness. Eros (romantic love) is passion, ego, vanity, a game of power.
Eros is chtonic, dyonisic, deep and low, darkness and emptyness, the moon, chaos, love is better represented by Apollo, the sun, order, clear and high. Duality ? Yes. This is my understanding.
I feel (from my own experience) that romantic love, eros, is a powerful force what binds us. It is superhuman, so it is irresistible, but because it is a chaotic force, it generates a lot of suffering. It is rare when it is appropriate, I see it as a heritage, not a very good one, but still useful. There are cases when it’s power of destruction and rebellion is needed to break karmic deadends, thus it has a power of setting one free. But it is always linked to suffering, and in the few cases when it is unobstructed, it quickly exhausts it’s passionate, chaotic nature.
We are created man and woman. This means man and woman alone are not a whole, but a half. This is also duality, and it also must be resolved.
For some it is done by furtehr reduction, and finding the Self, what is genderless, for others, the most of us, it is tried by uniting with another. Both are very hard to accomplish in a proper way.
For Rumi, the second was obstructed as Shams, his dear friend was banned first than later, probably murdered. He was a real soulmate to him … what rises the question … how was this possible ? The poems Rumi wrote show passion and longing. But he also was a theologist. Did he hide his eros in poems about his relation to God ? But the poems are more love poems than ones of religious fervor, and they need a “translation” to have a theologic meaning of the terms lover, face, rose aso.
I think it was eros, and because it was obstructed it just went as bad as possible, meaning the longing and passion were unbearable, generating great pain. And pain can be a great master. It has the capacity to burn everything unworthy until the only the bone of Self remains.
I feel there is a great mistery here … meaning I cannot resolve duality yet.
There is something uplifting in such powerful longing, perhaps for just an illusion, a promise of the unity we lost. That is why when eros is fullfilled, it loses it’s sacred power, and is transformed into satisfaction on a lower level.
Eros must be sacred, and approached accordingly, otherwise it brings us down.
I wonder what your thoughts or knowledge are on this theme.
My understanding of love, lovers, the Beloved, longing and desire have come from the experience of meditating on such poems… you have many questions that I would like to answer with the words of Rumi or Coleman Barks since these are what gave me the understanding and perhaps it will do the same for you…
from Coleman Barks in THE SOUL OF RUMI, p188-189
"In the meeting of Rumi and Shams, in that vital encounter, healing and the truest life begins. Any form of beauty or wisdom or celebration that puts one back in friendship with the soul is where the opposites find rest. ‘How can I be separated and yet in union ?’
Who is this Shams of Tabriz? The question is often asked if Rumi and Shams were lovers in the sexual sense. No. Their meeting in the heart is beyond form and touch and time…
One of the startling prospects that Rumi and Shams bring to the world of mystical awareness, which turns out to be ordinary consciousness as well, is the suggestion that we ‘fall in love in such a way that it frees us from any connecting.’ What that means is that we become friendship. 'When living itself becomes the Friend, lover disappear." That is, human being can become a field of love (compassion, generosity, playfulness), rather than being identified with any particular synapse of lover and beloved. The love-ache widens to a plain of longing at the core of everything: the absence-presence center of awareness. Rumi went in search of the missing Shams. The story is that he was on a street in Damascus when the realization came that [I]he[/I] was their Friendship. No separation, no union, just he was that at the silent core. I’d have to say that’s the [I]baraka[/I] (a blessing, the particular grace of taking in presence), the mystery of the ecstatic life."
from Coleman Barks in THE SOUL OF RUMI
"These are mystical love poems. Their motive is to draw us out of the person into the annihilation of [I]fana[/I] and the resurrection of [I]baqa[/I], the two motions of mystical life."
Thanks for sharing this poem Lavina and to everyone for the discussion.
I recently gave a card with the last portion of this poem on it to my own sweetheart. It is good to see this other part as well.
My husband and I often say that our own love is testament to higher wisdom and God’s grace because we were not able to steer from its course even as we played out our fears, healed from past hurts, and were clumsy with ourselves and each other.
from Coleman Barks in THE SOUL OF RUMI, p174
"There is a shredding that’s healing, that makes us more alive, a grieving required to enter the region of unconditional love.
The heat in the oven cooks us to a loaf that’s tasty and nourishing for the community. Rumi is always affirmative about grief and disappointments, mad with the [I]yes[/I] inside all [I]no’s[/I].
Rumi eats grief and the shadow and metabolizes them into his bewildered, surrendered self, then tries to live simply and generously from there."
Rumi:
I’ve broken through to longing
now, filled with a grief i
have felt before, but never like this.
The center leads to love.
soul opens the creation core.
Hold on to your particular pain.
That too can take you to God.
Thank you for this last explanation and quote.
I still believe it was eros, even if not physically manifested. On can be “in love” without gratifying the senses, and in fact, the physicality is just an expression. Eros is a mad, chaotic state of the mind, one what preexists creation.
When I say eros I do not think about making love. I think of the longing of the heart. There is no longing in love (agape) because that is radiant, solar, outgoing. The longing of eros is need, ache, desire, intaking, a hiatus what burns from the inside.
The chaotic, vibrant, passionate field of eros is great joy if followed, or unobstructed, but becomes great pain and suffering if cannot follow it’s course. It also can transform to anger rage or expressed madness, it probably depends on circumstances and the individual.
The obstacle must be unsurmountable, and human morality is not such a thing. A normal person (Earth human) will never be able to resist Eros, as Eros is superhuman. When Eros touches a soul, all what is old is lost and radical change is to be expected. This change might be of antourage, livelyhood, partner, but it also can be not apparent from the outside, but changing all paradigms of ones mind.
“Hold on to your particular pain.
That too can take you to God.”
THis is well said … but really this is the pride of a man who cannot avoid pain, and sees it’s transforming power. Rumi, he would’ve done anything to meet Shams, but this was impossible, and he realized what I call “the noble pain of Your absence”.
I don’t think there is an essential difference between the love of a mystic and the eros of an “ordinary” man. There is a difference of awarness and magnitude, the mystic knows the value of longing and ache, and a less aware person will shortcircuit it until finds satisfaction, or if not, even tries to clould his/her awarness to stop the aching. (drugs, alcohol, food are traditionally used in these cases)
Eventually, the msytic will find that the Beloved is in him/her as just Rumi said, in the form of Love. Love makes the other, and love makes me. God is said to be Love, so this is a sacred endeavour.
A person who is high on love, will see everything as sacred. No ordinary things exists for him, everything is a wonder, and he/she cannot stop speaking in verses. (as Rumi, or Majun)
another one from Coleman Barks but I don’t know where exactly
“There’s an ordeal, some anguish and suffering, essential to a soul’s growing into deeper love. Life must be lived.
One definition of Sufism is joy at sudden disappointment. The sufis know that precisely the right disaster comes at the right moment to break us open to the helplessness that an opening of the heart requires.
This is harsh truth, but the truth.
Love grows near truthfulness, and fades when words are tinged with lying.
Love grows from the ruins of personality.
There are heart regions that one does not enter willingly or knowingly, and that one actively tries to avoid re-entering.”
… then love is what brings us to those heart regions…
Dearest Hubert,
there are mysteries that can be understood only by the heart and not the mind…so if I may suggest to reflect on the mysteries of your experiences with your heart so that you can gain the full understanding of the heart regions that you have been in and those that you have yet to enter.
with deep respect and love
lavina
and the absolute last one from on Grief by Coleman Barks in RUMI THE BOOK OF LOVE
"The deeper the grief, the more radiant the love. We miss our friend. Lover’s tears are the true wealth. my fried john Seawright used to say that the real tragedy is when you don’t feel much of anything when someone dies. That lack of grieving, [I]the feel of not to feel it[/I], is not heard much in Rumi.
I recently saw “Fierce Grace” about Ram Dass’s life and particularly the stroke. The movie focuses on the starkest tragedies, not just his, to open the heart and help us find the vital core of consciousness, the soul. my favorite part is Ram Dass near the end saying yumyumyumyumyumyum when he hears a young woman tell her dream of her lover who has been murdered in Colombia. Several months after her lover’s death she has the first dream in which he has appeared. She yells at him, ‘where have you been!’ He says, [I]Listen. The love we had was wonderful, but thatis small peanuts to what’s ahead for you, and when that love comes, I’ll be part of it.[/I]
Ram Dass ecstatically tastes the [I] truth[/I] of what the dead lover says. No sticky possessiveness, no hanging on to the past. Grief opens us to more love, and the new love builds with the former, and there’s miraculous expansion. It’s a rare movie that gives off the fragrance of enlightened love. This one does."
Unfortunately, that was not the last one…this may be…I have brought out all my books of Rumi’s poems and spent the evening enjoying every single word that I have read…thank you for such an opportunity…
Animal Energies by Coleman Barks in RUMI, THE BOOK OF LOVE
"Any love: earth-love, spirit, the way of a man with a maid, the way of a dog with almost anybody, the way of a hawk with the wind, of a swan with a pond, of grandparents with grandchildren, of an ant with a grain of corn, of a lion with a gazelle, all the natural drawings-together lead eventually to annihilation. This is the mystery of animal energies. Rumi says , astonishingly, ‘God lives between a human being and the object of his desire’ (Discourse No.44)…
There is a witness who watches the obstreperous play of flame and eros and says, [I]This is the dance of existence[/I]. A great mutual embrace is always happening between the eternal and what dies, between essence and accident. We are all writing the book of love. Everything goes in."
Sometimes the feeling, emotion we call love, agape, eros etc. is so deep and mysterious it cannot be explained with simple words. Only the heart knows how to discern which is which.
Thank you lavina for encouragment. I could do better, for sure.
My experience is firsthand, and for more than a year I did nothing but searching and analizing.
“God lives between a human being and the object of his desire”
This is true. That is why a very strong desire can be the chain what draws us to Him, without any chance of escape.
But to much we have dwelt on this subject, I think. I am a Rumi fan, also, especially beacause I love to dance.
A quote from Sri Swami Sivananda … I could not think of your advise reading it.
"You may meditate for a period of twelve years and yet you will have no success in Samadhi if you have not destroyed the subtle lust or the craving-seed that lingers in the innermost recess of your heart. You will have to search out carefully this dire enemy—lust, that lies hidden in the various corners of your heart. Just as the fox hides itself in the bush, so also this lust hides itself in the substratum and corners of the mind. You can detect its presence only if you are vigilant. Intense self-examination is very necessary. Just as powerful enemies can be conquered only if you attack them from all sides, so also you can keep the powerful senses under control if you attack them from all sides, from within and without, from above and from beneath. "