Neglecting Meditation

and Refusing Kindnesses

When you neglect your meditation,

you contract with pain.

This is Gods way of telling you

that your inner pain can become visible.
Dont ignore it.

Your spiritual wincing affects your love.

A thief carrying off someones property
feels a twinge of conscience.

Whats this? he asks. Tell him,

Its the hurt of the one youve hurt,
hurting you. A conscience-seizure
changes easily to a seizure by the police.

Thoughts display themselves.

A pang for being forgetful
is a root. Roots produce branches.

Your inner opening and closing

is the underworld, the ground
that feeds the manifest world.

Tear out the thorn-roots quickly.

When you feel held in, find out why.
Dig for the cause.

When you feel expanded, water that.

When fruits appear, give them to friends.

In Saba, everyone was occupied with foolishness

and dalliance, and it was their habit
to be intentionally ungrateful
to anyone who gave them something.

To any benefactor, a citizen of Saba would say,

I am annoyed by your kindness.
Go somewhere else with your generosity.
I dont want your gifts.

They prayed, Lord, be far away.

Our mess is better than your beauty.
Take away the orchards, the lovely women,
your peace and your safekeeping.

The friendly towns close by, we dont want

such things! We like the desert
with its desolation and its dangers.

Mankind says the same, We want winter

in the summer, and then winter comes,
and we dont like it. Were poor,
and we want wealth, and we get it,
and its enough!

Were given guidance,

and we ignore it.

Mans animal-soul is a pyramidal

thorn-cluster. No matter how its arranged,
it pierces what it touches.

Burn those thorns.

Stay close to the Friend.

The people of Saba finally carried ingratitude

to its limit. We love pestilence,
they cried. We love our spreading disease
better than any cooling wind.

They began to kill their teachers.

They grew completely deaf to Gods will.

The brains of animals know their enemies

by their smell. In the floating dust,
sheep can sense that a wolf
has been near, so they graze elsewhere.
But the people of Saba had lost the ability
to be warned. They had broken their connection
to wisdom, and they got torn to bits.

The shepherd called, but the sheep said,

Go away. What do we need a shepherd for?
Each of us is shepherd enough for himself.
Everybodys a chief in this tribe!

The blackbird croaked over their houses.

They never heard. They bound up Gabriel
and ripped his feathers out. A dinner
was set for them, but they handed each other
handfuls of straw from the barn floor.

Here. Eat this.

This is fancy food.

There is no food
but meeting face to face
with the Friend.

(Mathnawi, III, 349-401)