Hearts and WIngs

"Heart, you are lost. But there's a path From lover to love.
Worlds blaze round.
Don't shrink!
The path is hidden
But yours."
-Rumi

heart-and-wings

Well here it comes - Valentines day. For those of us not currently in a relationship, it's better known as "singles awareness day." Ha. Ah love, that beat up misused misunderstood word. We just finished interviewing Coleman Barks, the great Rumi Translator, for Redvolution: Dare to Disturb the Universe. Rumi is well renouned for his tremendous love poems, but the love he talks about might be a little different than the kind of love those red hearts in the store windows are selling. Coleman told us that he once got a phone call from Hallmark, asking if he might consider doing a line of cards with some of his Rumi translations on them. "Well you realize that the kind of Love that Rumi writes about involves complete and utter annihilation." There was a long pause, and then the Hallmark rep asked, "is there a holiday for that?"

Say what? Love = annihilation? WTF? Isn't love warm and fuzzy and nurturing and sticky sweet? Not the kind of divine love that Rumi talks of. He wasn't referring to romantic love, between two humans. No, he was talking about the human daring to truly love G~d. This can certainly, and most beautifully, happen between two humans - in fact, one of the highest forms of human love is when two souls meet through the human form. Which can involve down and dirty sex. Spirituality and sexuality are ecstatically happy bedfellows. But it is not the kind of romance and intrigue, the 'will you be mine', the clinging, grasping romantic love that we're taught is love, the kind that is really about the quest for ownership over another. No, the kind of love Rumi talks about involves complete freedom, non-attachment, and trust.

To be consumed, destroyed, burnt in the flames of divine love, to the place where your ego dissolves, and there is nothing left of you but G~d stuff, that's Love. The search for this union with the divine is the path of the mystic. Every tradition has a mystic path, the path that involves daring to stare into the sun with your eyes wide open. It's not for everyone, and there are many dangers on the way. But once one has had a taste of the possibility of the the mystic path, it's hard to turn back. One is consumed by what the Sufi's call a sense of divine longing, which calls you, and refuses to let you sleep - fall back into unconsciousness, lose touch with your divine heritage.

There are as many paths as there are humans on this planet, and we each need to find the one that is ours, and ours alone. As Rumi says, "the chefs of God are cooking up a special stew, just for you." For me, that stew is ever changing, though at one time I used to call myself, in an attempt at simplicity, a "sufi buddhist baha'i punk rocker." There is still a lot of truth to this description - the Sufi in me is the passionate, fiery side, the Buddhist is the patient, peaceful, centered part of me, the Baha'i offers me a global perspective and a sense of law, and the punk rocker is the rebel, always seeking the fresh truth, the present truth, the truth beyond all limitations and dogma. I am all of those, and none of those.

Here is a mystic poem I have written, in honour of the search for annihilation in the fire of God, here spoken of as the divine feminine, the great Goddess, so needed as a counter balance to the worship of God as a patriarch. It is about the search for true divine Love.

~ ~ ~

All my life I searched for the diamond heart Ruby red
Emerald green
And golden gold

The hidden truth At the center of lifes labryinth

At each turn of the bend A fire awoke Ablaze Alive

Yet around the bend Always A sudden downpour would appear

To douse my desire Until there was nothing left But smouldering coals Blackened
Charred
Back in the cave

Yesterday Or was it tommorrow? In this dark dark cave I found that spark
A single flash
A glint
A twinkle
A droplet of light
And fanned the flames
With my dogged Love
My unextinguishable love

I let the wind of my desire For Her That Red and gold divinity That perfection
Completion
I can taste
On the tip of my tongue
On the very tip of my tongue
Just there
Always there
The aftertaste of truth
Still there

Love! I shout I cry I weep
I pound the pavement

Love! I kneel before you Ripped open Broken wide and bloodied
Dripping red
And roaring loud
Then soft
Softer
Just so....

And you who witnesses My agony My ecstasy You know
You truly know
That this is no charade

That Love is here Not gone Truly here Not gone

And I Am one Not two Not two
Just one

And all I ask for Is nothing Just everything Inside that nothing
Always
And not now
Now
And not then

All ways From inside To out

I shriek like the wind in february trees And loom like the moon On a hot august night With persistence
Dogged presistence
My stalwart friend

Waiting for the day Not wanting Not wanting anything more than this Even if this
Is the waiting

Waiting

Waiting for God's deepest embrace Consuming embrace To rip my illusions to shreds Until all that's left of me is Love

Waiting

To be destroyed by Her raging love Her flaming benediction Annihilated by Her grace

I kneel before You I stand before You I cartwheel before you Laughing
Wailing
Beseeching you
To bless me with a deadly kiss

I ignore you Turn from you Walk away The haggler in the market
Suddenly tired of trying
Suddenly finished
Done.
Enough.

Ha! I'll never be finished I'm still baking I am half baked

I will not be finished With this love With this life Until my very last breath

And even then.... Well I just may be back To continue the work

But let me tell you this one thing, this one thing: If you want to talk numbers Percentages I am 100 percent divine
Not one iota less
I cannot be otherwise
Even at my most imperfect
Try as I might
I am Him
Even when I'm too foolish to know it

He is me. And He is here Kneeling In front of this perfection of wisdom
This Goddess
Of fire