The deliciousness of milk and honey is the reflection of the pure heart: from that heart the sweetness of every sweet thing is derived. The heart is the substance, and the world the accident: how should the heart's shadow be the object of the heart's desire?
Come, seek, for search is the foundation of fortune: every success depends upon focusing the heart. Unconcerned with the business of the world, keep saying with all your soul, "Ku, ku," like the dove.
O You who make demands within me like an embryo, since You are the one who makes the demand, make its fulfillment easy; show the way, help me, or else relinquish Your claim and take this burden from me! Since from a debtor You're demanding gold, give him gold in secret, O rich King!
SAY: We believe in God and that which was revealed unto us and that which was revealed unto Abraham, and Ismail, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the tribes, and that which Moses and Jesus received, and that which the Prophets received from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them and unto Him we surrender Qur'an 2:136
In Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi's family there had long been a tradition of the recognition of the spiritual beauty, yearning, and wisdom of women. It was his grandmother, the princess of Khorasan, who first lit the spark of inquiry in Rumi's father, Bahaeddin Weled. It was under her care (Bahaeddin's father died when he was two years old) that he grew to be the "Sultan of the learned" and a great spiritual light for his world. Mevlana's mother, Mu'mine Hatun, a devout and saintly lady, was very dear to him. Mu'mine Hatun was the beautiful daughter of Rukhneddin, the governor of Balkh in what is now Afghanistan.
A spirituality adequate to the times we live in must first of all be centered in the reality of human completion itself. If it is based instead on any partial version of humanness, it will be insufficient. No matter what is sought to supplement this insufficiency, if the starting point is less than human wholeness, the result will only be distorted version of humanness. Sufism can be considered a path of completion in two important senses: First, it is a way that proceeds from and leads to human completion, the Completed Human Being (Insani Kamil). Second, it is a complete way that uses every possible effective means to orchestrate the transformation of a human being. Both of these facts--the completeness of the method and the completeness of the result--are of the highest significance.
Anyone who has probed the inner life to a certain extent, who has sat in silence long enough to experience the stillness of the mind behind its apparent noise, is faced with a mystery. Apart from all the outer attractions of life in the world, there exists at the heart of human consciousness something else, something quite satisfying and beautiful in itself, a beauty without features. The mystery is not so much that these two dimensions exist--an outer world and the mystery of the inner world--but that the human being is suspended between them--as a space in which both meet. It is as if the human being is the meeting point, the threshold between two worlds. Anyone who has explored this inwardness to a certain degree will know that it holds a great beauty and power. In fact, to be unaware of this mystery of inwardness is to be incomplete.
The Fatiha, from Salaat, published by Threshold Society.
Al-Ikhlas (Purity), from the Qur'an: English translation and Arabic transliteration, from Salaat, published by Threshold Society.
Al-Falaq (The Dawn), from the Qur'an: English translation and Arabic transliteration, from Salaat, published by Threshold Society.