Browse by: Quotation Source | The Seeker | The Search | The Sacred
Browse through the Newest Additions to the One Journey Living Book
Arranged by date, with the most recent entry appearing first…
To be nothing is the precondition of being.
Die before ye die!
And if He closes before you the ways and passes all, He’ll show a hidden pathway which nobody has known.
But don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth, without complicated explanation, so everyone will understand the passage. We have opened you.
Lovers do not themselves seek and yearn. In all the world there is no one seeking but He!
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.
If the Beloved is everywhere,
the lover is a veil,
but when living itself becomes
the Friend, lovers disappear.
Waves broke. Awareness rose again and sent out a voice. It always happens like this. Sea turns on itself and foams. With every foaming bit another body, another being takes form. And when the sea sends word, each foaming body melts immediately back to ocean breath.
When the ocean surges,
don’t let me just hear it.
Let it splash inside my chest!
One went to the door of the Beloved and knocked.
A voice asked, “Who is there?”
He answered, “It is I.”
The voice said, “There is no room for Me and Thee.”
The door was shut.
After a year of solitude and deprivation he returned and knocked.
A voice from within asked, “Who is there?”
The man said, “It is Thee.”
The door was opened for him.
And watch two men washing clothes, one makes dry clothes wet. The other makes wet clothes dry. They seem to be thwarting each other, but their work is a perfect harmony. Every holy person seems to have a different doctrine and practice, but there’s really only one work.
All the particles in the world
Are in love and looking for lovers.
Pieces of straw tremble
In the presence of amber.
Don’t unstring the bow,
I am your four-feathered arrow
that has not been used yet.
I am a strong knifeblade word,
not some if or maybe,
dissolving in air.
I am sunlight slicing the dark.
Who made this night?
A forge deep in the earth-mud.
What is the body?
Endurance.
What is love?
Gratitude.
What is hidden in our chests?
Laughter.
What else?
Compassion.
Let the beloved be a hat pulled down firmly on my head.
Or drawstrings pulled and tied around my chest.
Someone asks, “How does love have hands and feet?”
Love is the sprouting-bed for hands and feet!
Your father and mother were playing love games,
They came together, and you appeared!
Don’t ask what love can make or do!
Look at the colours of the world.
The riverwater moving in all rivers at once.
The truth that lives in Shams’ face.
One Song
What is praised is one, so the praise is one too,
many jugs being poured into a huge basin.
All religions, all this singing, one song.
The differences are just illusion and vanity.
Sunlight looks a little different
on this wall than it does on that wall,
and a lot different on this other one,
but it is still one light.
We have borrowed these clothes,
these time-and-space personalities,
from a light, and when we praise,
we are pouring them back in.
Yesterday, I was clever so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
Be certain in the religion of Love there are no believers or unbelievers. Love embraces all.
There is a force within that gives you life — seek that. In your body there lies a precious jewel — seek that. Oh, wandering Sufi, if you are in search of the greatest treasure, don’t look outside, look within, and Seek That.
One of the marvels of the world
is the sight of a soul sitting in prison
with the key in his hand.
The spiritual path wrecks the body and afterwards restores it to health. It destroys the house to unearth the treasure, and with that treasure builds it better than before.
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
