If the world is like a body, “God” is the spirit of that body. His Will animates and gives purpose to everything; He illumines the forms of material things with the beauty of His attributes. Thus in a beautiful face I see His Beauty glowing like a divine light shining from a mortal lamp.

Now, our soul is so thirsty for Him, when we see that beautiful face we sit in rapture: adoring, loving, feeling transformed by what we see. We hunger, and feed, and hunger some more. But we often make a fatal mistake: We think that face is the source of what we feel. This makes us want to “possess” it, to assure ourselves of an continuing relationship with it, so we can feed our hunger whenever we feel the need.

That face and the soul behind it are only a lamp, though. Trying to own them is like taking a lamp into a dark house, and soon the oil burns up. Then we no longer see the same light we saw before. But if we are fed from God, there is no reason why all the world could not remain a source of beauty for us. It doesn’t have to fade. The same piece of music can touch us again and again, and always in a newer and deeper way – as long as we aren’t trying to wring the experience dry for every drop it can offer independent of its Source.

So as for the things I pursue in life, they cannot, of themselves, fulfill my needs – only God can do that. My goals offer a context for experiences that are unique to each situation, and they’re an excellent way to grow and know life, but the beating heart at the center must be Him or else each one will ultimately dry up.

I’ve found this to be true of marriage, occupation, places I’ve lived, friends, faith, even dreams. It’s not the outward form that endures, but how it relates to the soul’s journey. The body is brought to life by its spirit – not the perfection of its cells and organs.

When one climbs a mountaintop to watch the sunset, what is the object? And if another doesn’t bother, and stays at the bottom of the hill, what has he lost? Some things are simply beautiful, wonderful, and deserve attention for no other reason. Truth, beauty, virtue, God, deserve to be loved because they are the essence of what is lovable. To ask “why” is to miss the point: they are the why!!

Consider the love relationship: a man pursues the woman, dates the woman, but why? Is it for the child, the family, what comes after? Or isn’t the whole process its own reason for being? It happens because it wants to happen; because we desire for it to happen. There may be an “outcome”, but that follows later: the experience itself is the reward. As Richard Feynmann said of his love of physics, “Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.”

To pursue religion for the sake of a glorious afterlife is to put in all that effort for the soul without knowing why. That is, it’s better to walk the mountain in ignorance and enjoy its beauty than to spend the whole journey thinking of the top. God is His own reason for being sought, His own proof. Spirituality would otherwise just be another kind of commercial enterprise – albeit based on a stranger economy.

Maybe the confusion is that people are like grammarians, sore athirst, debating the ways and means of drinking and what comes after; until an ignorant man passes them and says, “Your thirst should be all the proof you need that drinking is worthwhile! Cease your ramblings and find the river!”

I asked a friend once: “In marriage, you grow closer together every day, right?” He said: “Yes.” I replied: “So, do you stay married for the sake of some perfect day in the future, or for each one of those lesser days?” The marriage, if well-founded, is its own reason for being; even though it may improve all the time, it’s in this very process of improvement that the purpose lies.

How can I describe being together?  
Every inch of you  
reached miles into me.

Your hair  
more than beautiful strands of black,  
like a dark river where my fingers  
wandered and strayed.

Your whole being  
was a banquet of heart and mind  
to fill my beating cup.

I walk away from your table  
drunk every time --  
flush until my heart is dizzy.

If children laugh at my staggering walk  
let them know  
how weak your memory makes me.

I am "ghani" now: rich like a king  
whose eyes see only gold;

Or a fish, not contented with drops  
who in your ocean feels no need.

I’ve heard it said a few times that sacrifice is when we do something for another that involves pain. However, I’m not sure the concept of sacrifice is connected to hardship. Although the measure of deprivation may indicate the dearness of a sacrifice, the act is confirmed, not by harm, but by the spirit of the gift.

“Making something sacred” can even be a joyful process. For example, if I am eating something delicious, and a person I love comments that they would like some, I would share it. In fact, sharing it with them is more enjoyable than keeping it to myself. I am certainly sacrificing – giving up something I enjoy for the sake of friendship – but it has little to do with feeling hurt.

I wonder if the emphasis on pain might be due to our upbringing. Rather than knowing God as the source of all joy – and every we action we perform on His behalf leading us toward a greater experience of His love – I have heard from childhood that spirituality is about escaping who we are, and the attendent pains of self-denial. If there were more of a God focus than an individual focus, perhaps we would translate our religious ideas in terms of what brings us more than happiness, than what brings us more pain.

One of my very dear friends moved to this country a few years ago and has been steadily improving her English. Whenever we chat, I help her by pointing out if things don’t sound quite right. However, this situation has created a dilemma for me, which prompted the following meditation:

The thing is, her manner of speaking is so utterly charming that I’ve fallen in love with the way she uses English. “Fixing” her accent and usage is really the last thing I want to do. She sounds so cute and her word choices are so endearing, I find myself torn between acting as a friend to help her, or being selfish and letting the errors slip.

It reminds me of when my last cat was a kitten, how joyfully he played – though he wasn’t too coordinated. I didn’t want him to grow up. I loved every minute of his being a kitten. I knew maturity was inevitable, and he needed to learn things to take advantage of it, but that doesn’t mean I was happy to give up those precious days.

My friend says the dearest things without meaning to. In Persian she expresses herself quite eloquently; in English, her ideas are touched with a special sweetness because of the new language. I know it’s better for her to learn more, but another part of me wants her to stay just the way she is.

It made me wonder if God sees us this way. We all make mistakes and get things wrong, but perhaps in His eyes those errors have a delightful quality He simply adores. As I thought of this, I felt an intense sense of His love for who we are, right now. I hadn’t perceived it so fiercely before. Then I wondered: what if I saw myself and the world this way?

I have heard the sea  
pour out its mournful lament;  
and the dirge of the clouds  
with their rumbles and lightnings.

I have watched the grey sky  
enfold us in a shroud of sorrow;  
as the pall-bearer drops  
loose their lugubrious weight.

These storms that feel  
like unending death:  
yet they kiss the ground  
with bright green hope.

I was a crystal chalice  
open, and waiting for the rains to pour.  
Since youth I had longed for fullness.  
It seemed my being had been made  
in the shape of something  
I was meant to find.

But for so long, I was a bearer of hollows.  
My bones made dull groans  
as the winds passed over me.  
I trembled when the Earth trembled,  
and viewed every precipice  
with shattered dreams.

The she came into my life.  
She poured forth, from a long, fluted stem;  
filling all my spaces with her ruby kiss.  
She intoxicated me, my lady Wine,  
and made every dark place  
smile with an inner glow.

We are quite a pair, she and I.  
When other lips come for *sohbat*  
they stumble away down dark alleys,  
unable to bear the heady laughter.

I was a chalice, once;  
now I am only a taste, divine,  
borne aloft in Saghi's arms.

Being humble

I don’t think a person can “be” humble, although they can be humbled. Humility is what we experience when standing before something truly magnificent. As long as we are mindful of God, we will be humble – sort of like when we reflect on the magnitude of the universe (and He created that with one Word!).

The other “humility” is like hiding under bush so people can’t see any beauty in you. Should a beautiful gem hide itself? If God created it such, then it is what it is. Humility is what we feel before God and His creation, not a condition we manufacture.

This implies that if one feels pride, the best answer is to turn to God (isn’t that the answer for everything?) and recall what is truly Great – rather than turn to ourselves and revise our self-assessment into something bitterly mundane. God’s attributes appear in the mirrors of created things, after all, and human nature is the most excellent of these.

Receiving praise

When a flower delivery boy appears at your doorstep, it’s natural to smile and be thankful. He enjoys being the bearer of good things. But no one misunderstands what is what, or feels bad for the joy caused or relayed. When the moment is passed, he returns to bring more flowers to someone else. He knows that the people he visits are made happy by who sent the flowers, and not because of him. His joy lies in serving as a means of connection; yours in what is received. And God’s love is the source of that gift.

When people praise us, we’ve delivered something to them that has sweetened their lives. This sweetness draws from a Source, and we act as the channel connecting those two for a moment. The more one serves this connection, the greater the praise and happiness of the ones served. There is nothing bad in this. It only goes wrong when the lamp believes that its light is unique to itself.

Self-honesty

I like connecting the ideas of humility and self-honesty. Consider a mirror: Whatever it shows does not come from the mirror itself. Someone beautiful might appear in it, or someone not; but there is never a reason to be prideful or abashed.

If the soul is a perfect mirror – perhaps clouded by imperfections for a time – humility is being faithful to the process of revelation, rather than tying our heart to what is revealed.

No one has known my soul; not even I. Like a Platonic Form, it shies from the realm of being. It has never appeared in a mortal shape – this in-dwelling essence, my soul – but it does animate my body.

People have known my body, my face, my voice; but have they known me? What I am, even I cannot see! And yet, holding a lamp is enough to make use of its light; essences needn’t be understood to make friends with the individual.

Then what about God? He is “the most hidden of the hidden”: anywhere you look, you cannot find Him. So hidden, even a believer might disbelieve, if one start demanding evidence.

Perhaps He animates Creation – the form of His will – as a soul does the body, whose actions are the will of the spirit. In that case, we needn’t understand His Essence to form close bonds with His Being. If His “face” is everywhere, perhaps He is “the most manifest of the manifest”: we see Him constantly, in the sense that people see us every day; even if we never see Him, in the sense that souls remain invisible to each other.

So are we invisible or do we make friends? Is God far from Us or is He nearer than our life’s vein? If both are true, why emphasize the hidden nature of God and not dwell on the invisibility of souls? Souls are hidden, so we pay attention to their personality; then if God is hidden, shouldn’t we focus on the character of Creation, and begin to know it as the forms of our Lord?

I had thought there were two phases of writing poetry, but now I find there are at least three.

In the first phase, I tried to write what would please other people and fit their perception of “good”. In the second, I wrote to please myself and satisfy my own definition of good. This third phase is writing to honor beauty itself and express something good beyond the limitations of myself and others. These are poems who purpose is to offer beauty a home, a place to shine. Since it is not judged by normal standards, it must be that it judges me, and shows me new things even as I bring it into being.

Metaphorically speaking, a man might choose a certain woman because society approves of her; then he might choose someone based on his own tastes; and then he may meet someone who teaches him about what is worthy in a mate. Desire itself – our very love of beauty! – can blind us, because it measures each object according to its own standard.

Therefore, one writes until his own work takes him to new places. To do this, he must free his inspiration both from his own self and others. His effort becomes a dialog between the mysteries in himself – which he knows in few ways better than art – and the Mystery that gives purpose to this whole charade: the essences of lover and beloved finding contact in a point of communion such as poetry.

I find this third state expressed in the following prayer:

Show us the right way, that is, honor us with the love of Thine Essence, that we may be freed from turning toward ourselves and toward all else save Thee, and may become wholly Thine, and know only Thee, and see only Thee, and think of none save Thee.

In another place it says, “These are they who see with His eyes, hear with His ears…” How does one create art and see it with His eyes – with the eyes of Beauty itself – rather than the eyes culture and education have given us? What form of creation will serve Beauty and teach us in doing so what we haven’t learned about its higher forms?

If it needs profound honesty to admit to what one truly likes despite the norms of society, it must require stepping out of the way entirely to reveal things we ourselves may not initially like. How do we know if it’s really good and not just our imagination? It’s possible we might never know.

I’m not sure at this point how such “minor revelation” works – in this case revealing beauty through poetic forms – but it seems a decidedly mystical process, and perhaps involves many of same stages one goes through in that discipline. Perhaps the pursuit of art is even a symbolic form of that essential exercise.

Freedom is an interesting concept. We basically want to be free in order to take advantage of whatever opportunities come to us, so we can use them to find what we’re seeking in life. Not being free is our fear of missing out on what life’s all about: should I have had more sex, thought more radical thoughts, lived on the wild side, set my soul running free through the fields of possibility?

However, this desire for freedom is so we can be open to receive something. From that something we don’t wish to be free at all. Who wants to be free of their happiness?

For example, ask a lover if he really wants to be free from the one he loves. When I fall in love, I would rather be a bandage on the sore feet of my desire! than remain free to walk all the lands of the Earth…

And so the soul finds true joy only in submission to God; not because this is submission goes against our nature, but because true submission fulfills our nature in the same way thirst submits to water and hunger submits to food: we are longing and He is our Succor. Until this is felt, I question what a person has so far discovered.

Whom do I write to now?  
Where can I send my complaint?

Time has uncoiled like a serpent  
whose fangs have felled my hopes.

I await the next strike  
the paralyzing blow  
after which, I soon expect  
to be swallowed whole.

Are we all consumed so viciously?  
Or is this choice delight  
only for those who ask?

Pray for His will  
and you might find it:  
unfolding in your life the way  
  a venus flytrap  
responds to the slightest touch...

He is a devourer of souls, a sacred flame  
to burn all wooden forms of love!

  "He who is beloved of Me,  
  him shall I slay.  
  He who is slain by Me,  
  I Myself shall be his ransom."

My partner is my pain tonight;  
and somewhere in that: a compassion  
whose depths I will never fathom.

Night, tonight  
  fair black on  
    drops of starling white;  
a dreamer's sea  
  for finer sails  
    O captains of the light!  
onward ho,  
  to heaven's hold  
    where angels take their flight  
and join the  
  twirl of galaxies  
    who dance upon such heights.

A mirror is little more than  
a reflective pane of glass,  
maybe a meter square,  
yet what it can reflect  
is unbounded...

Never think  
great dreams are beyond you!  
Perhaps they are -- but so is the sun  
beyond the flower  
it warms all day long.

The Cause of God

I do not think the Cause of God exists apart from the people it serves. It aids them to fulfill the potential of their destiny; but to place religion above its members would be like conceding a greater reality to the map than to the journey. The one exists to benefit the other. Whatever does not assist the wayfarer in his travels should be exchanged, and whichever beliefs hold us back from progressing forward, discarded.

The purpose of religion in leading us to God? Ask the lover if he has any purpose beyond his beloved, or any hope but to sweeten her life. Even his love itself, in the end, is a distraction from the one he loves. If the heart can be fulfilled to such an extent in connection with an individual, how much more in reference to God: because at its root the two phenomena are the same, one mortal and the other immortal.

Hunger and satiety

Mystics have stated that hunger is a desirable state, since it makes us mindful of our dependence on God, whereas satiety tends to cause one to become forgetful of God. This may be true in some stages, but for others everything, even satiety, is a reminder of Him. Although hunger causes us to reflect on His name, the Sustainer, being filled up can remind us of His name, the Sufficer.

Maligned mysticism

Since the beginning of religion there have always been two aspects: the inner and outer, private and public, mystic and social. When these two are in harmony, religion aids both the spiritual and material well-being of mankind; but if either is taken to excess, the results can be quite damaging.

Many are critical only of mysticism, however. Examined in isolation from its partner aspect, it’s like removing an engine from a car and asking what use is it if it can’t go anywhere. On the socio-political side more understanding is given to the culpability of its followers; only mystics seem to inherit the taint of their predecessors. Although dogmatic excess in exoteric religion has sent millions to their deaths, it still has nowhere near the bad name that mysticism has received.

How can this be? Why does mysticism provoke more criticism when in comparison it’s relatively harmless? A lot may have to do with the fact that since social authority lies in the public sphere, whenever these two sides are in conflict only one voice is heard. Nor are mystics very concerned with how they’re perceived.

As I live, I continue to make mistakes, too often to count. But what is a mistake? If something that detracts from a desired state or outcome, perhaps my desire is what frustrates me. To Ilm a mistake is a mistake, and one rightly tries to avoid it the next time; toIrfán, even mistakes have value.

I am what I am. Is this the only truth I can aspire to? I do the wrong things, say the wrong things, but my being remains. Who do I make my choices for? What is it I don’t already have? Maybe nothing at all. Then all of these mistakes are a part of something: being right is a vain hope. Trying “to be” is what makes living hard! – though not trying can leave us without a sense of purpose.

Perhaps there is something wholly different, which is its own purpose. Is life itself the meaning of life? Is the real art the depth of our appreciation? It would be like a story where nothing makes sense at first, but afterwards everything starts to come together. Are we players on a stage, unknowing, the play itself a mystery? As the acts unfold we unwittingly play our part, choosing between alternate endings written by another Hand. If the purpose of the play is to educate and entertain, sometimes it does so by appearing foolish. Shouldn’t I be laughing at the farce of my own life?

In fact, I am beginning to think it is better to fail in our efforts toward spirituality and have to ask for forgiveness, than to succeed and feel no need to call on God, because whereas the former leads to humility, an understanding of our powerlessness, and the development of a bond between Creator and creature, the latter too easily breeds a false sense of independence along with a concept of “self-perfection” which exists apart from Him. Better to have both; but if not, better to have Him.

Sometimes I feel such mysteries  
moving through this pen!  
telling the same truths  
over and over again,  
all of them, simple verses --  
recollections of the Friend --  
but though I write them down  
there seems to be no end.

So many things to study, to know,  
not only a million facts  
but a million points of view...

The skies of man's endeavor  
are filled with countless lights!  
each standing bold against  
the empty backdrop of night.

No one can count them all.  
Every season brings a new configuration.  
Run, run to catch up, but they outpace you.

Then comes the Dawn of understanding.

The True Orb touches the horizon,  
Its first rays bringing all to naught;  
the very meaning of "seeker" vanishes  
when he enters the presence of the Sought.

One Light in Heaven,  
all lesser things be gone,  
even the blackness between  
now a glowing shade of blue.

On that Day, there is only Him.  
Whatever else had seemed of interest  
must fall to Heaven's coup.

Young Leyla,  
with bright eyes  
like stars from another heaven.  
You guide this lonely mariner,  
his ship twice-wrecked  
against life's tormented seas.  
For now I have  
new hopes to lift me:  
that elsewhere in love's firmament  
there might be other eyes  
like these.

O Nasim!  
gentle breeze of the Merciful  
delight to eye and mind  
beauteous form of intellect  
a sharp arrow  
flying through the fields of hearts...  
You've trapped me.  
I think of you often now.  
When will I feel your breezes again  
to lift this building heat  
O Nasim?

If you could see your own face  
the way I do  
every mirror would trap you.

Now a nightingale  
you would soon see:  
you are also the rose.

Your days would be filled up!  
your nights,  
spent in your own arms.

So why are we divided?  
Why did He give you such beauty  
and me the eyes to see it?

You look in the mirror and  
think you're not enough...  
but for me  
you are almost too much.

My toes can't reach the floor  
when you walk by --  
the sky is not high enough  
to describe how I soar!

Yet you say,  
"I am too fat, too dark,  
too ugly, not good enough."  
and little by little, I die.

You are stabbing us both  
with that disapproving blade!

Why can't lover and beloved  
occupy the same space?

Such beauty --  
it nearly burns my soul! --  
yet fails to admire itself:

Nicki, Angela, Zhinous,  
Fariba, Nini, Leyla, Samira,  
Mahtab, Nasim, Sandra...

The list has no end  
of angels who walk this Earth  
but cannot see.

If only I could loan you  
my eyes  
for one moment!

If seer and seen  
could put off  
their cloak of separation  
for a while...

But then,  
if not for that distance,  
what power would move  
this poet's pen?

I find myself happy today  
for one thing above all:  
that I've learned what it means  
to like one's self completely.

Certainly not because of  
any degree of perfection;  
that, I was never able to achieve.

But as I look at  
the people around me --  
the variety of characters,  
  attitudes, activities --  
I find a certain, indescribable beauty  
pervades them all.

Life is not about  
what is deserved -- but what is;

And if we fail to recognize  
this amazing beauty before us,  
so evident -- right here,  
in this company, right now --

If we neglect to perceive  
what it's trying to show,  
we will have missed out  
on a precious opportunity.