"Assuredly, your wicked carnal mind is a rapacious wolf: why are you laying the blame on every friend and neighbor?
In its misguidedness, the foul, disbelieving, unconscionable, carnal mind is like a hat for concealing the diseased condition of a hundred bald heads.
For this reason, O poor child of God, I am always saying, "Do not remove the collar from the neck of the cur."
Even if this cur should become a teacher, it is a cur still: be the one whose carnal mind is abased, for its nature is towards evil.
Go around the Saint, and absorb His light...
In order that the Saint may redeem you from the vices of your corporeality, and that you may fit the foot of the Beloved like a boot.
From generation to generation, the wickedness of the undisciplined carnal mind was the cause of the world being suddenly set on fire..."
Rumi (Vol. 6, 4856-4864)
Commentary: Even at the close, Rumi offers his truth, without any sugar-coating. This journey was never intended to be easy, and we should never let our guard down, as long as our "carnal minds", (our egotistical, selfish, delusional, controlling minds) are alive and kicking.
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The Mathnawi, Jalalu'ddin Rumi's master work, is a 1200 page poem. Having studied it in an intensive tutorial with a Persian scholar, Dev Prakash in 1979, I am now rereading it 30 years later,using the Reynold Nicholson translation. My hope is that you will find these short selections speaking to your soul, as they do to mine.
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