The Wisdom of Rumi the poet (An exposition)

buterdaniel (54)in #steemit • 8 years ago

The Wisdom of Rumi (An exposition)

I woke up this morning to see some wonderful pieces of wisdom and poetry from Rumi the Turkish poet and I got so inspired to do an exposition here. Some of the gems from the poet are :

What is poison ?

Rumi the Turkish poet avers that poison may be anything which supersedes our necessity in life. If may be ego, wealth, power, money Greed, laziness, love, ambition or anything of the sort.

Anything in excess is a disadvantage unless required in excess.

Those factors may not necessarily be bad in themselves but have the ability to destroy our lives when they exceed our requirements as human beings.

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Take money for instance, many people have been misled into thinking that when they have excess of money, they have power but this is not always the case. Such thinking now informs their decisions which are clearly irrational.

Anything above human requirements has capacity to poison the soul.

What is Fear?

The poet says fear is simply non-acceptance of uncertainty. If we accept uncertainty, it becomes adventure.

We are unsure about the future and thus deters us from making certain decisions. We live in our comfort zones because we are unsure of what lies without. We refrain from trying out new things, new projects, learning a skill, increasing productivity, starting that business.

We often ask

What if it doesn't work?

Well Rumi counsels us to whilst asking ourselves such questions should ask at the same time

What if it does?
What if we succeed?

Do not hold back on your ideas because of practical considerations, monetary requirements or the support of others.

What is life without a little risk. We sometimes need to ignore the fear we feel and lounge out into the deep. Who's knows what we might pull back in.

Detoxify yourself from the poison of fear and let uncertainty become adventure.

After all life is an adventure not a race.

What is Envy

This, Rumi says is the non-acceptance of the good in others. When we accept good in others it becomes inspiration.

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Jealousy and envy are perfectly normal emotions. It's only natural to have them. However, just like other emotions, acting purely based on such instincts could be often disastrous.

Most feelings are like fire. We can never tell the extent to which they may take us. The same goes for envy.

Sometimes we get envious when our friends succeed, or does better than us. We cannot stop ourselves from feeling envious but at least we could question why is it that we are feeling envious. We can then feel inspired by our friends story. Consider this :

Be happy for others, share their joy and happiness. For therein lies the path to your blessings.

Envy ruins people. The green eyed monster does not have the capacity to take us far enough compared to if we are inspired.

Jealousy has its positiveness if we are able to control it. But like we pointed out earlier on, feelings are so fickle that it is best to let them go. Emotions becloud our judgement and often makes us to over react.

What is Anger?

Anger is the non-acceptance of things beyond our control. When we accept it becomes tolerance.

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Sometimes life hurls certain challenges and people at us. We can hardly control what happens in our environment, in fact, one thing we never may be fully able to control is the behaviour of others. Isn't it better to exercise Supreme acceptance. Consider this :

In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher.

Dalai Lama

We cannot control what happens outside but we can control what happens inside. when we allow what happens without to control what happens without, we lose control entirely. We lose ourselves to anger and frustration.

We should train ourselves to handle unintelligent people and situations intelligently. We should learn to speak to our emotions. To speak to the turbulence of our minds and say :

"peace be still"

Let us tell our hearts to be still. Let us practice the pause when we are angry. Consider this wisdom :

Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.

Martin Amis

Tolerance is far greater a virtue to anger. Anger is no virtue at all.

What is Hatred?

This is Non Acceptance of people as they are. If we accept them unconditionally, it becomes love.

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We think we know love but we don't. Love involves forbearance, tolerance, forgiveness, pain and immense sacrifice.

It is unselfish.

Putting ourselves and our needs and even our emotions aside just so to make the next person happy without expecting nothing at all in return.

We often feel attraction when we see beauty but that is not love. It is emotion and emotions are fickle. Emotions are conditional and so it is difficult to truly love whilst inspired by them.

Love comes from understanding and acceptance.

It comes from knowing the worst about a person and still have inner arguments of whether to love the person. Then deciding to love them. Love is growing into maturity. Taking decisions that we may not necessarily like but taking them just to make the next person happy. Because we love them.

No tangible or immediate benefits May accrue to love but therein we derive purpose of life.