distant

i've been feeling a bit distant lately – spiritually. and i'm tired of christians. even christianity a bit. too many are following because everyone else is doing it. and it's more of a formula than anything personal. i guess it's that way for almost any religion – to some extent. but i'm growing weary. i want to break out of the crowd. and find those secret places that some say jesus was drawn to.

i read a book while i was in africa. it was called "the forbidden rumi: the suppressed poems of rumi on love, heresy, and intoxication." and although i didn't necessarily agree with everything (or understand everything for that matter), there were thoughts and overarching themes that hit home. this idea of becoming a heretic in the eyes of others because what you have is so personal and so intimate that it demands leaving the crowd. and it demands abandoning the formula. that resonates with me. and then there was the idea of dissolving into god – losing all of self and becoming one with our creator. (a bit mystic, but i'm intrigued.)

if i'm heading off course, go ahead and tell me. but please don't stop me for simply stepping off the path that everyone else is on.


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here is an excerpt from rumi's book. not the excerpt i wanted to share, but all i could find online.

songs to shams, songs to god 6

what a story! you finally meet someone in whose presence you are transported to god. you immediately go off together, hand in hand, and shut yourself off from the world behind the closed doors of your retreat room. over the weeks and months to follow, you dissolve into each other through simply sitting in each other's presence, gazing raptly at each other. (when god sits down before you, where else would you want to look?) when you emerge from your retreat, you are fundamentally different from the person who entered it so many months before. the only sane thing to do after an event like this is to live happily ever after, yes? but it wasn't like that.

rumi may have entered into retreat with shams as a kind of devout shepherd, looking after his flock of followers, but he emerged as a hungry wolf, exhorting people to drop their pretenses, move beyond their rigid adherence to the outward forms of religion, and enter instead into a direct experience of god.

rumi wanted the townspeople of konya to recognize shams as he had come to know and see him: as a direct conduit to the divine. for rumi, shams was a funnel that led to god. exposed to the heat of shams' presence, rumi would simply melt, and the mixture of the two souls would take both into the consciousness of union. this is what true religion is all about, and rumi fully expected his former followers to leap into the divine fire with him.

their response instead was to react mostly with criticism and outrage to the perceived heresy of two souls merging into the one god. for the orthodox mind, it is accepted that the founder of the religion would have had a direct encounter with the energies of god, but not, evidently, anyone else. the negativity around the companionship between rumi and shams grew so large that shams had no choice but to leave, and rumi fell apart with grief.