Contraction and Expansion

"When a feeling of spiritual contraction comes over you, O traveler, it is for your own good; do not become on fire with grief in your heart.
For in that contrary state of expansion and delight you are spending: the expenditure of enthusiasm requires an income of painful preparation to balance it.
If it were always the season of summer, the blazing heat of the sun would penetrate the garden,
And burn up from the roots the soil where plants grow, so that the old withered ones would never again become fresh.
If December is sour-faced, yet it is kind; summer is laughing, but, none the less, it burns and destroys.
When spiritual contraction comes, behold expansion there: be fresh and cheerful and do not let your brow be wrinkled....
Observe these two qualities, contraction and expansion in the fingers of your hand: assuredly after the closing of the fist, comes the opening.
God's work and action is regulated by these two qualities: these two conditions are as important to God as both wings of the bird are to the bird."

Rumi (Vol. 3, from 3734-3766)

Commentary: In all the changing and mysterious forces at play, outside in the world, and inside our own hearts, how do we know where to turn? Rumi wrote, " She saw no better fortress than the protection of God: she chose her abiding-place near to that castle."(3:3711)