Masters do not withdraw from us because of the presence of our ego. They have tremendous compassion for our suffering and are willing to tolerate us for our errors, because this is the fundamental virtue of the Gnostic Church.
Inner experiences are interpreted based on the perfection of discrimination and conscious analysis in meditation.
If we stop practicing simply because an ego intervenes, then we will achieve nothing. Rather than submit to resistance, develop comprehension: the third force of divine intelligence that reconciles or resolves problems.
These exercises do not convert anyone into a demon, vampire, black magician, etc. Their absence, consistent lack of application, or mixture with impure methods does.
As for returning to your rites:
Learn things by heart, because they die of cold on the page.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
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.
Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.
Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Be notorious. Destroy your reputation.
When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you’re not here, I can’t go to sleep.
Praise God for those two insomnias!
And the difference between them.
My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.
I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Why do you stay in prison
When the door is so wide open?
We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.
Sit, be still, and listen,
because you’re drunk
and we’re at
the edge of the roof.
I have lived on the lip
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I’ve been knocking from the inside.
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.
Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah… it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.
The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you
Don’t go back to sleep!
You wander from room to room
Hunting for the diamond necklace
That is already around your neck!
I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.
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.
—Rumi