"How should the sea of the King, to which every water returns, be ignorant of what is contained in the torrent and river?
The King said to himself, "Look how I have dealt with you, in lavishing a precious treasure! Look how you have dealt with Me in your mean-spiritedness!
You have acted disloyally to the King who answers every call for help."
Then the disciple came to himself, and asked pardon of God...
The pain that arises from the dread of losing one's faith - take pity (on the one who is thus afflicted) for this is the irremediable pain.
You are helpless and unable to understand the cause of this helplessness: your helplessness is a reflection of the day of retribution.
Happy is the one whose spiritual food is this helplessness and bewilderment, and who in both worlds is sleeping in the shadow and the protection of the Beloved.
Life depends on dying to the self, and on suffering tribulation: the water of life is in the land of darkness."
Rumi (Vol.6 4771-4830)
Commentary: In the last 5 pages of the Mathnavi, Rumi admits that God isn't surprised by how often we fall. The ego has to go. Eventually we will learn that the only place to rest is in the palm of the Beloved.
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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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