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Archive for August 3rd, 2008

The heart of love, .. come to the Ocean of Unity

Posted by Pelgrim on 3rd August 2008

How should the orients of the lights of Almighty God be contained in the heart? Yet when you seek His Light, you find it there. But this does not mean that His Light is truly contained within it. Rather, you find it in the heart, just as you find your own picture in a mirror, though it s not truly contained by it. But when you look into the mirror, you see yourself. (F 165-166/174) 

Hadith: “God says, ‘My heavens and My earth encompass Me not, but the heart of My gentle, believing, and meek servant does encompass Me.‘”

Rümi often refers to this hadith directly or indirectly.

Through God’s perfect power the bodies of spiritual men have gained the strength to bear the ineffable Light. … Hence the Seal of the Prophets related a saying from the eternal and everlasting King:
“I am not contained in the heavens and the void, in the supernal intellects and souls, Yet I stay like a guest in the believer’s heart, without qualification, definition, or description.” (VI 3066, 71-73)Outside of the seven heavens, greater than the two worlds! And this is wonderfull: That Ineffable One is hidden within the heart! (D 24544) The seven heavens are too narrow for Him. How does He enter my shirt? (D 18348) If the two worlds were to enter my heart. they would be contemptible. What a wonderful expansion Thou hast given my wounded heart through Thy love! (D 30224)

The heart of the saint “contains” God, while the heart of the ordinary man is mired in water and clay. What determines the worth of a man is the state of his heart. Man’s task in this world is to cleanse his heart. to polish it, and ultimately to make of it a perfect mirror reflecting God. This he can only accomplish with the guidance of the Possessor of the Heart.

Oh heart! God will look upon you when, like a part. you return to your whole.
God keeps on saying. “We look upon the heart, not upon the form, for that is water and clay.”
You keep on saying, “I also have a heart.”
The heart is above God’s Throne, not below it!Certainly dark clay also contains water, but not water with which to make an ablution.
Though it is water, it has been vanquished by clay.
So do not say concerning your heart, “This too is a heart. ”
The heart that is beyond the heavens is the heart of the saints or the Prophet.
Purified, cleansed of clay, it has entered into increase and become all-sufficient.
It has abandoned clay and come to the Sea.
Freed from clay’s prison, now it belongs to the Sea ….You are obstinate and say, “I am a Possessor of the Heart.
I have no need for anyone else, I am in union with God” -
As if water in the midst of clay were obstinate: “I am water, why should I seek help?”
Imagining this polluted thing to be a heart, you turn your heart away from the Possessor of the Heart.
Do you really allow that this object fascinated by milk and honey can be a heart?
The taste of milk and honey reflects the heart; the sweetness of every sweet thing derives from the heart.
So the heart is the substance and the world the accident. How should the heart’s shadow be the heart’s goal?
Does a heart fall in love with property and position and submit itself to this black water and clay,
Or to fantasies, worshiping them in darkness for the sake of empty talk?

The heart is nothing but that Ocean of Light.
Is the heart to be the locus for God’s vision, and then blind?

Among hundreds of thousands of the elect and the vulgar, no heart is to be found: The heart is in one person. Which one is he? Which one? (M III 2243-50, 61-70)

Quoted from the “The Sufi path of love,
the spiritual teachings of Rumi” by William C. Chittick

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