Inner Dialogues

    The Friend said, "Empty your mind to make room for my gaze."
    I said, "But I'm an educated man!"
    The Friend said, "The head seeks many words, but the heart seeks only my name." 
    "What shall I say when men of knowledge call me a fool?"
    "Say nothing. Just teach them to dance."

*

    "My soul is from elsewhere," Rumi said. "I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there."
     "And yet, and yet," I replied, "the Way is through every delight of the earth, minty and salty, misty and wondrous."
     "Beware of pleasure," Rumi said. "Earth is innocent but wild."
     "I enjoy her, I do not possess her."
     "Seek the diamond that is not of this world. The earth is but a metaphor."
     "It is through the delight of her doorways that I become this diamond."
     "The enjoyer is lost in pleasure, but the witness is not what is witnessed."
     "In Earthly sacraments, I only drink the nectar of the Self."
Then Rumi and I went into the tavern, and came out singing the same song.

*

   My mind said to my heart, "It's getting so strange out there!"
   My heart answered, "Out where?"
   Mind said, "The world!"
   Heart answered, "That's not out there. That's you."

*

   The Beloved sang through my breath, "I became the Other so that you might find yourself through Me."
   I said, "That was the morning both God and I were born."
   The Beloved whispered, "You were never born."

*

   I said, "When I melt into You, I become Me. The way is to dissolve."
  The Beloved answered, "Meet me in the silence between your thoughts, where love turns particles into waves."

*

   I met an apple blossom on my walk. It was a bud the day before, and will be scattered upon the earth tomorrow. I asked the apple blossom, "What gives you hope?"
   The blossom replied, "Where there is hope, there is no ecstasy."
   "Then what is the secret of your wild gentle beauty?"
   The blossom replied, "Do what I am doing now."

*

   I told the Beloved, "It is painful to receive your vast Gift, knowing that I did nothing to deserve it!"
  The Beloved answered, "This is the final and most terrible suffering of  'I'. But 'I' can end the pain right here, right now."
  "Oh tell me how, Friend, tell me how!"
  "Just leap into my wave of annihilation, and drown in the ocean of the Giver."

*

   The Beloved asked, "What secret have you learned here?"
    I answered, "Joy is made of tears, emptiness made of diamonds."
    The Beloved asked, "Did you arrive by returning?"
    I answered, "I gave up returning and not returning. I gave up bowing to the Master and not bowing to the Master. I gave up Jesus, Muhammad, Amitta, Govinda. Then I became the womb who mothered them all."

*

   "To become truly rich, you must give up one thing more." Then the Beloved turned her back on me, and walked into wayless doorless Light.
   That is why, when people ask, "Who do you follow?" I answer, "Follow no one, become the path."

*

   When the Master disappeared, I had to meet God face to face, and ask directly, without the mediation of thoughts and signs: "Is it true that since the first morning of the world, there has been nothing left to do but laugh, sing, dance, and meditate?"
    She answered, "Don't be serious. It's all like an echo, an afterimage on the inside of your eyelid. There was no Word of creation in the beginning, but a humming, like the buzz of a drunken bee."
   "What was the meaning of that humming sound, that Om, that vast Ameen which created the world?"
   "There is no creation, there is no world, there is only the song."

*

   "Could I weep 10,000 tears in the time it takes light to pass through the width of a hair?"
   The Beloved answered, "They would not equal one drop of my wine."
   "I understand now, there is nothing to understand." 
   "Yes, my child, that is the joke."
   "Is it a punchline," I asked, "or an invitation to the Wedding?"
   She answered, "You are still making useless distinctions. Just drink a cup of my causeless joy."


Photo by my dear friend, Aile Shebar