I have a bad reaction to anything that smacks of a rejection or a fail. But if life has taught me anything so far, it is this: 1. Every rejection/fail tells me that it wasn't right for me, not that I wasn't right for it. 2. This will open up space for something that is even better or fitter. 3. To let this temporary setback get to me and push me down is to give up my power. 4. Everything that causes difficult emotions can be channelled in a productive/creative direction. Harness it! 5. My definition of success is very different from the norm. Do not let the norm sway you from what gives your life meaning. 6. It takes courage to believe in yourself and stand your ground even against the high winds. Be proud of yourself. 7. Integrity, authenticity, intellectual honesty... whatever you lose, you win if you do not lose those.

Marcus Aurelius has some inspiration for me:

'The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.'

I feel like crawling back into my shell

Embarrassed and ashamed

The world asked me who I am

What are you doing here

Why do you pick

the crumbs off this table?

I looked here and there

Stunned and silenced

Scarcely could muster a word

Forgot I had language

The harsh voice rendered me dumb

I doubted myself, my right

To be here

What was I doing here, I wondered

I looked around

Embarrassed and ashamed

Not even able

To remember my name.

~Me

I happened upon this story about a Sufi mystic, as you do. As I write ‘as you do’ playfully it strikes me that I tend to see a whole lot of things that come my way as coming my way for a purpose. As if they are being sent my way. I am always looking for meaning in serendipitous encounters. Do they really have ‘meaning’? I don’t know… but what I do know is that it is through this alertness to what is coming my way from nowhere that I have ended up with learnings or experiences I wouldn’t have otherwise…

I believe very much in applying oneself to knowledge be it reading the masters, studying known works, and so on which this story poses something of a counter to. But I am also a believer in the power of intuition, what comes from the inside so to speak. Now how these two are connected is a different story…

Bayazid al-Bistami, a famous Persian Sufi mystic from the 9th century, spends years copying religious and philosophical texts, searching for spiritual truth and divine knowledge. One day, as he is working on transcribing ancient manuscripts, a Khidr or a mysterious figure in Islamic tradition, appears before him.

The visitor asks Bayazid what he is doing. Bayazid explains that he is copying and studying these texts to gain wisdom and understanding of the divine. The visitor says: "Why do you spend your life copying words about what you seek, when what you seek is within you? You are the text you are trying to understand. Study yourself, and you will find all the wisdom you are looking for."

This revelation transforms Bayazid's approach to spirituality, leading him to turn inward for direct mystical experience rather than relying solely on textual knowledge.

Having mentioned my favourite poetry genre in the last post, I must share a few lines from the category that have always haunted me with their beauty. I wouldn’t be surprised if I have shared them earlier…

As lines, so loves oblique may well

Themselves in every angle greet;

But ours so truly parallel,

Though infinite, can never meet.

—Andrew Marvell, The Definition of Love

I am sure I have mentioned before that I love Rumi? There is a depth in his verses... they seem to be not on a cerebral but a spiritual plane... you do not understand his verses so much as sense their meaning...

That reminds me, and maybe this must be a topic for another blog. When I was really young, maybe not even all of 21 years old, and the internet had started becoming widespread in India... that was when I started getting exposed to a much wider range of reading material than my libraries had allowed. I mean, you couldn't wander and meander and discover one thing to another in the library as you could on the internet. That's when I discovered a lot of poets I didn't know about. I had read many of the great novelists growing up, but poets not so much. A friend of mine at the time who had studied English literature formally and who knew a lot of the academic jargon told me, when he found out which particular poems I was enjoying the most, that these were mostly from the 'metaphysical poets'. After that, I started searching for more from the metaphysical poets... I was reminded of this because Rumi is not counted among the traditional 'metaphysical poets' who are all part of a western movement, but I would think he would fall in that category? And that makes me wonder why it is that I am drawn to metaphysical poetry...

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

doesn’t make any sense.

~ Translated from Persian by Coleman Barks and John Moyne from The Essential Rumi