Ruminating with Rumi
The way within is your own. Words may lead you to the door, but you enter in silence. You may feel alone in the still darkness, but you are embraced by the whole of the all that is your true nature. In darkness, you sit atop realization. Desire no longer claims you. The ember of joy awaits your memory of it. Crack open your heart to receive its recognition as your true nature. You cannot travel in body to your destination. It is a journey within. Whether it is you, your neighbor, Lao Tsu, Buddha, Jesus, or Muhammad, the ember within is the same for all. There is only I AM. No other. Days become eons. Words become flames. The ember within remains eternal.
Recently, I read an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson on skepticism. Here are a few of my reflections on points that he made:
Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.
God is a substance, and its method is illusion.
Existence is illusionary energy of consciousness.
Consciousness is emptiness that is nowhere; it has no existence.
Consciousness is reality; existence is illusion.
Habit fixes believers to their last fundamental positions.
Spiritualists find themselves driven to express their faith skeptically.
A passing thought while watching waves roll across the beach: Light is like a rising tide flowing over sands of darkness to wash them clean. You cannot know in mind or heart. Knowing begins by emptying yourself of thought and feeling. Empty of self, the tide can bring your true nature to the shores of your realization. On those tide-swept sands, you remember twia.