This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
From Essential Rumi, by Coleman Barks
I've read this verse by Rumi over and over again in the past few days, and it made me aware of how I welcome joy, smiles and happiness but become laden with sorrow the moment things appear to start entering an unfavourable situation. The mind automatically starts judging and analysing, creating and spinning stories and outcomes which are often just as fleeting as the thoughts that give birth to them.
I read once, that if we truly try to befriend everything and everyone that comes along, joy will never leave us. If we can understand what an important role sadness, solitude and disappointment play in our lives, we would never resist them or oppose them, but instead welcome their lessons with the same love as we welcome happy moments and contentment. For the minute we understand that they're all just different forms of a Teacher that has come to impart divine knowledge to us, all our resistance to it will disappear.
Just as the Rumi verse says, we have to learn to let pain in just as warmly as we open our doors for happiness. In 'A New Earth' by Eckhart Tolle, the writer explains that when you truly befriend that which gives you pain, you overcome it. It no longer hurts or serves you. You transcend it. Welcome and love pain as a guide of what it has been sent to make you aware of within yourself - that is the real challenge, not overcoming the pain itself or resisting its transformation into resentment or anger. For every wound that hurts can only be healed by showing it some Love. :)
2 comments:
Beautiful, as always. It is simple and serene :)
hello sneha.
You have really great blog.
weldone yaar
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