Those Who Don't Find Love...Let Them Sleep

"Those who don't feel this love pulling them like a river those who don't drink dawn like a cup of spring water or take sunset like supper those who don't want to change let them sleep..."

This is the first part of a poem by Rumi called Those Who Don't Feel This Love.  You will find the complete poem below, but I wanted to explore this line first...

It kind of reminds me of the expression that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink, though stated much more eloquently!  According to phrases.org, this "horse" expression "appears to be the oldest English proverb that is still in regular use today. It was recorded as early as 1175 in Old English Homilies..." and translated to "who can give water to the horse that will not drink of its own accord?"

If you have never tried yoga before and aren't ready for the life journey that this paths leads you on, you aren't ready.  I can pick you up at your house, bring you to the studio with me, pay for your class, lay out your mat and have you sit on it, but I cannot make you practice yoga.  And, even if you decide to try out some of the poses, I certainly cannot make you create an internal practice that opens you up to your intuition, your inner voice and your Higher Self.  What opportunities have you offered to others who have turned them down?  I think making the initial offer is fabulous!  It shows you are caring and that you want to share what you have learned.  But, if met with defiant heels in the ground, let it lay.  Why expend your energy to create change for someone else when that is impossible to do, anyway?  Rumi advises let those people sleep.

The next line reads, "This Love is beyond the study of theology that old trickery and hypocrisy/ If you want to improve your mind that way sleep on."  Wikipedia defines theology as, "the systematic and rational study of concepts of God and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies".  Love the word rational in the definition!  I digress.  Rumi is reminding you that external learnings and beliefs detract, or maybe distract is a better word, from seeking th divinity you already have within.  He says if you want to learn about love through maya (illusion), you may as well go back to sleep. If you don't mind the analogy (sorry if you do!), you have become the horse that has found its voice and says it wants to drink water but wants to find his own way of getting to the source without being led there on a direct route.  He writes, " If you want to improve your mind that way sleep on."

The next line states, "I've given up on my brain/ I've torn the cloth to shreds and thrown it away."  Here, Rumi discerns there is a difference between learning with the active thinking mind versus something else. What could that something else be? You throw away your brain and you are left with the essential you?  Not the labeled you (mom, dad, worker, caretaker, teacher, whatever); just you.  Your heart, your spirit, your voice, your intuition.  The raw nakedness of love as love is without the mind to over think it or add more labels.  By "tearing the cloth to shreds", he has stripped down to just him.  He is no longer labeled by what he wears.  There no longer remains illusion regarding his attire, his richness or his poverty. He just is. Soham.

The last line of the poem says, "If you're not completely naked wrap your beautiful robe of words around you and sleep."  Because what are you going to do with your oh-so-important words? Who are they for?  What do they prove?  Love is beyond words and thought and definition.

In a separate writing, Rumi says:  “Human beings are mines...Only the unsayable, jeweled inner life matters…”

Rumi was born in 1207.  He was a Sufi poet.  Sufi's were known as mystics of Islam seeking the truth of divinity through passion and love.

Hear this poet asking you, 800 years later, are you ready to strip down to your heart?  Are you? Or you going to sleep for another hundred years?

Those Who Don't Feel This Love

"Those who don't feel this love pulling them like a river those who don't drink dawn like a cup of spring water or take sunset like supper those who don't want to change let them sleep... This Love is beyond the study of theology that old trickery and hypocrisy/ If you want to improve your mind that way sleep on. I've given up on my brain I've torn the cloth to shreds and thrown it away. If you're not completely naked wrap your beautiful robe of words around you and sleep." ~Jellaludin Rumi

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