The Essential Rumi

Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.

Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought! Why do you stay in prison When the door is so wide open?

Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself.

Respond to every call that excites your spirit.

When you go through a hard period, When everything seems to oppose you, ... When you feel you cannot even bear one more minute, NEVER GIVE UP! Because it is the time and place that the course will divert!

These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.

Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be.

God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites so that you will have two wings to fly, not one

Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon; How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.

There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can't hope. The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.

Drum sound rises on the air, its throb, my heart. A voice inside the beat says, "I know you're tired, but come. This is the way.

I will be waiting here.... For your silence to break, For your soul to shake, For your love to wake!

You are so weak. Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave till it gets to shore. You need more help than you know.

What matters is how quickly you do what your soul directs.

Whoever's calm and sensible is insane!

Don't try to steer the boat. Don't open shop for yourself. Listen. Keep silent. You are not God's mouthpiece. Try to be an ear, And if you do speak, ask for explanations.

I don't want learning, or dignity, or respectability. I want this music, and this dawn, and the warmth of your cheek against mine.

Soul, if you want to learn secrets, your heart must forget about shame and dignity. You are God's lover, yet you worry what people are saying.

Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being. If not, leave this gathering. Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty.

You have forgotten the One who doesn't care about ownership, who doesn't try to turn a profit from every human exchange.

There is a basket of fresh bread on your head, yet you go door to door asking for crusts.

The same wind that uproots trees makes the grass shine. The lordly wind loves the weakness and the lowness of grasses. Never brag of being strong. The axe doesn't worry how thick the branches are. It cuts them to pieces. But not the leaves. It leaves the leaves alone.

There are thousands of wines that can take over our minds. Don't think all ecstasies are the same! Jesus was lost in his love for God. His donkey was drunk with barley.

You're water. We're the millstone. You're wind. We're dust blown up into shapes. You're spirit. We're the opening and closing of our hands. You're the clarity. We're the language that tries to say it. You're joy. We're all the different kinds of laughing.

There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can't hope.

Brother, stand the pain. Escape the poison of your impulses. The sky will bow to your beauty, if you do. Learn to light the candle. Rise with the sun. Turn away from the cave of your sleeping. That way a thorn expands to a rose.

There's no one with intelligence in this town except that man over there playing with the children, the one riding the stick horse. He has keen, fiery insight and vast dignity like the night sky, but he conceals it in the madness of child's play.

Are you jealous of the ocean’s generosity? Why would you refuse to give this joy to anyone? Fish don’t hold the sacred liquid in cups! They swim the huge fluid freedom.

Knowledge that is acquired is not like this. Those who have it worry if audiences like it or not. It's a bait for popularity. Disputational knowing wants customers. It has no soul... The only real customer is God. Chew quietly your sweet sugarcane God-Love, and stay playfully childish.