Rumi: Who Says Words with My Mouth

There is a candle in your heart,
ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul,
ready to be filled.
You feel it, don't you?
 -- Rumi

Today's guidance from The Rumi Card Book:  

Category:  Warning ... Do not call a cup the Sea; do not call mad the sage of Love.  Do not inflate your experience:  Honor the true wisdom.

Category explanation from the book:  "One of the essential features of a real seeker's life is to start humbly listening to the warnings--inner and outer--that the universe will always be trying to give to him or her.  This takes true discrimination, what Jesus called "the wisdom of the Serpent," detachment from our own plans, and a constant willingness to listen to the often quiet and obvious instructions of the Divine."

Who Says Words with My Mouth

(The video shows San Francisco before the great fire caused by the earthquake of 1906.  The music is Debussy's Clair de Lune)




Who Says Words With My Mouth?

All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I'll be completely sober.  Meanwhile,
I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,

but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?
Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.

If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

This poetry, I never know what I'm going to say.
I don't plan it.
When I'm outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

From Essential Rumi
by Coleman Barks, http://colemanbarks.com