To Know We are Loved

"What do you need most?"

I could see that there is something badly missing in my life. I had noticed it before, but the pain of seeing it had always meant that I would put the question to the back of my mind. I also found that I was in the grips of a very deep fear; the fear of saying the wrong thing, of making a mistake, of failing some cause that lies beyond the run of everyday life. (...)

“Remember," my teacher said, "I asked what it was you needed most. I know that you are ready to receive the answer within and thus be able to ask the question.” (...)

“I need to know I am loved.”

(from "To Know We are Loved" - formerly "The Invisible Way" - by Reshad Feild, chapter 2)

The Sole Purpose of Love is Beauty

"What a day today.
There are two Suns rising!
What a day,
Not like any other day.
Look!
The Light is shining in your heart,
The wheel of life has stopped.
O you who can see into your own heart,
What a day,
This is your day."

Mevlana Jelalu'ddin Rumi

Knowledge Anchors Love

"Beauty is concerned with freedom – the freedom of the soul which, in Sufi terminology, is sometimes termed “a knowing substance”. This substance knows itself, but only when it has been recognised in light, the substance already having been distilled and purified by all the inner work we need to do on ourselves. As we work on distilling our lower natures and illusions, so, in turn, the Light, which is called “the Light of lights”, or “the Light behind the sun”, has real space in the chalice of the heart. “As above, so below.”

(from "Inner Work" by Reshad Feild, chapter "The Sole Purpose of Love is Beauty")

Listen to Reshad Feild reading Rumi's poepm in a version by Coleman Barks and accompanied by violin music of Andrea Helesfai (copyright Chalice Publications, Switzerland)

I see my beauty in you.
I become a mirror that
cannot close his eyes
to your longing.
My eyes wet with yours
in the early light.

My mind every moment
giving birth.
Always conceiving,
always in the ninth month.
Always the come-point.
How do I stand this?

We become these words
we say,
a wailing sound moving
out into the air.
These thousands of worlds
that rise from nowhere,
how does your face
contain them?

I’m a fly in your honey,
then closer,
a moth caught
in flame’s allure,
then empty sky
stretched out in homage.

Mevlana Jelalu'ddin Rumi