Rumi also called Mawlana was a Sufi mystic & poet in the Persian language. Rumi’s work is mostly written in Persian but he also used Turkish, Arabic & Greek.
His poems have been widely translated into many languages. The language may be any but the words are conveying a deep spiritual message.
Rumi’s quotes touch the spiritual concepts in a poetic essence.
Quote 1
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.
Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
Changing the world means trying to change the situations & circumstances happening to us. It is a mental state where we want the world to act as per our wishes.
We want life to flow as per our will. And when it doesn’t happen & it will never happen that way then there are feelings of disappointment & anger. We want people to act as per our wish but they only act as per their perspective.
The mother wants her child to behave & act as per her wish. The father wants his child to become a doctor. A wife wants her husband to not get angry at any time.
People want society to change & are not happy with the current situation. The teacher wants the student to sit silently & not make noise. People want to stop all the crimes & so on.
There are unlimited expectations & every expectation is towards someone else to change. Things hardly change, if we make an effort to change another person & make him behave as we want then we will find that he will start behaving exactly opposite of what we have wanted.
Wise people can see that changing the world is a huge waste of time & energy. Nothing changes outside, everything is happening on its own accord. This has been from the very beginning.
So many centuries have elapsed & so many people have been born & died but things happen with no change. There is no end to anger, there is no end to battles, there is no end to crimes, there is no end to injustice happening around & there is no end to the calamities.
But we can change ourselves, we can take a step inward & bring the focus to us, focusing on everyone else. There is a great possibility to change the mind & reach the higher realms of the inner world.
When the inner changes, something miraculously happens on deeper levels & it causes the outer to change without any expectation. That’s the reason the spiritual masters have a great impact on the people.
Quote 2
“I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books & stars. I started listening to the teaching of my Soul.”
In the initial stage of seeking, the seeker is very excited & he tries to find the knowledge in the books, in lectures, or in discourses. He does everything he can that is said & heard from different outside sources.
And every source is saying something different. The opinions & the techniques that are being read or heard differ & sometimes contradict each other. Some spiritual masters may say to be silent & not react but be calm when angry. But the other spiritual master might say to respond aggressively so that the emotions do not accumulate in the mind.
When the seeker gets an understanding that the outer sources are no longer helping him & the thirst he has within him is still alive then he knocks on his own door.
There is only one who knows all about you, he has a clear idea of all your life tragedies, and he is watching & waiting for your arrival. That one is none other than the inner soul.
“Soul is trying to communicate with us in non-verbal language.”
He is trying to give us the lesson that needs to be learned. He is creating certain situations in our lives so that our eyes can open & there can be awakening.
It plans & wants us to pass the lesson so that we can move ahead with the higher chapters of life. When we fail to understand the messages & lessons in life situations then they repeat themselves. They will be repeated till the lesson is learned.
The seeker still remains the seeker but he has now taken a different route. This route is the perfect route & will always end at the right destinations. This route is the route of the soul, it is entering within us in the deep cores of mind.
Quote 3
“You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?”
The wings were given to everyone so that they could fly in the world of bliss & ecstasy.
The invisibility & the forgetfulness of the wings have caused us to live a life of troubles & pains. The wings are available & whoever searches for them discovers the powers hidden within him.
We didn’t believe it when someone told us about our lost powers. We have no faith left & we are ready to continue our routine life of suffering with no thought of rising high.
There is no contemplation of the higher consciousness, we think about profits & our dreams for a luxurious life, but we never think of something beyond this. The rich people getting everything that can be purchased with money are too in the circle of suffering.
There has not yet come a time for them that they can relax & live a life of no worries.
“The potential for higher life is inbuilt for every human that is alive & breathing.”
He may be poor or rich, black or white, strong or weak, sick or healthy, bigger or smaller, intelligent or foolish, educated or uneducated, everyone has the same potential hidden within the roots of our being. So it is not a question of the potential, it is a question of who searches for it. One who seeks for it finds it.
Life plays a great fun game with us. It is like a person searching for the lost spectacles, he is searching everywhere & finally comes to know that the spectacles are right on the forehead.
We search for inner peace & happiness everywhere & prefer to crawl through life because we didn’t get it anywhere. And one day the enlightened person comes to understand that the wings were present right in the forehead & he has been searching for them all over the world.
Quote 4
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
When there is a wound there is a natural healing. Nature heals the wound with its healing powers. The light of healing is entered so that the darkness of the wound can melt away.
In the painful moments of life, there arises a great want to be free from the pain. This is not just a verbal want but a scream of the soul to be released from the agony. This is a live & vibrating desire coming out from the deeper levels of the mind. And the universe listens to this call & sends the light that brightens the being.
The wound becomes the reason for the light to enter. If there was no wound & everything was just normal then there was no calling. Then there was no thirst for the divine water.
The wounds given by life become the opportunity to awaken the greatness within & break the prison of pains.
The most disturbed people in life reach the top ladder of success & this happens in any arena of life. It may be money, it may be health, it may be spiritual enlightenment or it may be relationships.
The successful people have undergone a great struggle in their lives. Life has knocked them down very badly. All the situations & circumstances have beaten them up. And this major defeat has given them the power to rise again with more determination.
In this process of struggle, the light has entered into their life & they reach a place where others cannot reach easily.
Accepting life’s troubles & flowing through the river is the way to the light.
Giving up & quitting with a fear of failure is the way to darkness. If we choose to do nothing then nothing special will happen, everything stays the same.
When we take steps & fall then we have to get up again & repeat this process so that one day there will be no fall because we have learned to walk.
Quote 5
“When someone criticizes or disagrees with you, a small ant of hatred and antagonism is born in your heart.
If you do not squash that ant at once, it might grow into a snake or even a dragon.”
Small critics & negatives are like small seeds, very little & looking unimportant, minor. The little negative thoughts that flush away in the mind show no major signs of destruction.
They are like a small spark that goes unnoticed & ignored with no idea of how harmful they are. There is no awareness of the negative emotions within us & no sense of their potential for destruction. These small seeds if not squashed in the initial stage form a big tree one day. Then everything seems difficult.
When the negative emotions are planted & nurtured then they get deeply rooted in the mind. They become the way of life. They become the reason for every irritation & frustration in life. They become the reason for every angry incident & the jealousy of others.
Drop by drop these emotions are filled in the bucket of mind. When the bucket overflows with negativity the life turns into hell. Then Life becomes a chain of pain. The negativity that is emitted within attracts more negativity from all around the world.
Negative people, Negative jobs, Negative news, Negative neighbors, Negative incidences, Negative opportunities, Negative health, Negative relationships, everything is attracted as per the negative energy flowing within.
As day by day, these feelings get stronger, it becomes difficult to break the chain of pain. It becomes difficult to sow the seeds of positive emotions because the negativity will wipe out positivity due to its dominance.
This dominance of negative emotions is our self-created. No one else is responsible for the inner state that we are living, that is designed consciously or unconsciously by us.
This all started from the very small seed & there is an opportunity that we can erase the seed in the initial stage. It is easier to wipe out the seed or a small plant than to cut a big-grown tree.
These seeds of negative & criticism have to be noticed & replaced with the positive with a priority. To do this we have to be alert & aware of the inner emotions that are emitted every now & then. Once a negative is identified it should be immediately looked into & repaired with replacement.
Quote 6
“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”
There are some things within us that we love doing the most. We are naturally in sync with these things & as we do them there is a feeling of joy.
We specialize in this thing & it may happen that from our childhood we may have been stopped from doing this thing because it is of no benefit in monetary terms. The majority of the people remain unaware of this thing because of the dominance of the surroundings.
Doing the things that we do not love doing creates resistance & the energy remains blocked within our body because we are doing the thing that we do not want to do. He is holding it tight & there is no natural flow of energy.
We drag our days doing the un-favorite things because we haven’t discovered the thing that is our favorite. We compromise on doing the jobs that were not supposed to be our destiny. We were supposed to do the things that we love to do.
When we identify & do the thing that we love doing then we do it from our soul. We do it with complete attention & there are no distractions.
Body, mind & soul are in alignment while doing this thing. There is a free flow of energy & energy flows like a river within our being. In this natural flow of energy, all the disease vanishes & there are feelings of joy.
Energy levels are boosted to high levels & there is no rest needed. There is refreshment & vitality in every moment & all the effort doesn’t look like effort, it becomes play & joy like a child playing & enjoying his own world.
The complete attention is focused on this one thing & everything else is automatically unfocused. Life situations are transformed with this new energy & it opens the gates of a new life of joy.
Quote 7
“Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
Living in a world of chaos, we are completely involved & focused on routine things. The urgency of the tasks, the project deadlines, and the long list of pending tasks have grabbed our lives.
It has not just taken the time but the complete focus. Our eyes have become blurred & we cannot imagine a life beyond what we are currently living.
We have accepted that this is the only way to live & there is no escape from the prison of life. We have to go on living & continue suffering till death comes. We are in no effort to find any way out of this miseries of life. And all of humanity is living this way except for a few people so we follow society.
We follow the life of prison that is filled with everyday anguish, egoism, battles, jealousy & depression. And to escape all these things, we take the support of the minor pleasures that make us forget everything for some time.
“There is a world beyond the ordinary world of wrongdoing & right-doing.”
It is unaffected by all the miseries of life & all the pains & sufferings are unreachable in that place.
It is a world where there is utter peace & tranquility flowing eternally. There is an abundance & everlasting happiness that cannot be imagined with the conscious mind.
This world cannot be found anywhere outside & it resides within the inner being of every living being. We have missed something that is closer to us than we expected.
We can see with our eyes far away, we can see other people, and we can see mountains & sky but we cannot see ourselves. We cannot see the inner world, when we close our eyes everything unknown begins. Enlightened people have reached this inner place & they are waiting for our arrival in that place.
Quote 8
“Knock & he’ll open the door.
Vanish & he’ll make you shine like the sun.
Fall & he’ll raise you to the heavens.
Become nothing & he’ll turn you into everything.”
The universal powers want to make us shine like the sun but its working is very much different from what we are taught.
Universal powers want us to connect to the higher light & remove the darkness. It wants us to raise our consciousness to the peak levels where life is completely a joy.
“Universal powers are available all the time & they haven’t disconnected from us for a single moment.”
They are waiting behind the door to be knocked so that they can open the door.
We rarely ask for help or guidance from the universal powers. We look for help & expert advice in all ways possible, we search for leaders that can lead us & provide solutions for our life problems.
We look everywhere outside but we are unaware that there is also an inner dimension & it is available at any time. There isn’t anything that can cost or stop us from connecting with the inner self. The only thing that is holding us back is the lack of knowledge & the unawareness of the inner powers.
In life, we try very hard to reach our desires. We have been taught to work hard & struggle to achieve success. And the results convey the message that there is something missing & there should have been another way around.
The other way is trusting the universal powers & this is the very first step. When we believe with all our heart then there is a let go. We are not worried, there is no stress, the things happen very freely & naturally. There is no resistance & hard work but simplicity. There is a vibration of harmony & peace in the mind, the actions will be there but they will not be rigid.
When we leave our ego behind & become nothing then universal powers turn us into everything. Ego means battle, struggle, resistance, and dominance over others & non-ego means release, compassion, letting go, trust & gratitude.
The Ego takes away everything from us & Non-Ego gives us everything without asking.
Quote 9
“Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.”
Life provides us with good & bad, light & darkness, joy & sorrow. Life is very dynamic & unpredictable, there seems not to be any logic for the things that are happening in our lives.
Things look like they are happening as a coincidence but they are not. Things are attracted to us by the law of attraction working all the time.
When we entertain the fearful & sad things that life is providing us then we are inviting more of them. The more we focus on them, the more they will increase in quantity.
The sad things have come to convey a lesson & to shift our attention from sadness to happiness. They are the signals from the life force energy to make a change in the focus, they are telling us to withdraw our attention from the fears & retain it on the good things.
Focusing on the negative aspects of life not only affects the mental health but also the physical health. It drains a huge amount of energy & the cells within the body shrink due to fear & depression.
The diseases are caused by the attention towards the negative things. A small series of negative thoughts create disease within the body parts, the disease first enters the spiritual body & if the negative is not ignored then it appears in the physical plane.
We need to shift our focus to good & positive things ignoring the sad & fearful things. Shifting the focus changes the inner vibration of the being & one starts emitting good vibes.
These good vibes then attract more good vibes creating a chain of good vibes & this overall results in a good life.
Quote 10
“There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.”
There is a thirst for something within us that pulls us. We live life & we also get many things in life that we want but still, there is some un-fulfillment left behind. It looks every time as if something is missing, in the deep cores of the mind there is a calling that is unheard by the conscious mind.
We chase outer things to find happiness but there doesn’t come a time when we can say that we have finally got the happiness that we were looking for.
We jump from one temporary happiness to another assuming that the next one might make us truly happy. We experience temporary happiness but it fades away sooner & is further replaced by sorrows.
“The temporary happiness that we chase has a sorrow attached to it as a shadow.”
It is like a circle of day & night, for some time there is light everywhere after some time there is darkness everywhere. And there seems to be no end to this.
We have to take the inner route to find the happiness beyond happiness. The thirst for the search arises from within so the answer has also to be found within. There is a candle within the heart that is waiting to be kindled & when one lights this candle then there is no darkness left anywhere. Then there is a fulfillment that we were always looking for.
By reaching the inner realms the void of the soul gets filled. The inner music fills the soul & there is a dance.
Once a person reaches such a state then nothing more is required for him. He is totally content & fulfilled, he is overflowing with the blessings eternal.
