I know you're tired but come, this is the way.

I was dead, then alive.Weeping, then laughing.The power of love came into me,and I became fierce like a lion,then tender like the evening star.

When someone beats a rug,the blows are not against the rug, but against the dust in it.

Soul, if you want to learn secrets,
your heart must forget about shame
 and dignity. You are God's lover,
yet you worry what people are saying.

Do you know what you are?You are a manuscript oƒ a divine letter.You are a mirror reflecting a noble face. This universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself;everything that you want, you are already that.

You think of yourselfas a citizen of the universe.You think you belong to this world of dust and matter.Out of this dustyou have created a personal image,and have forgottenabout the essence of your true origin

Woman is the light of God.

A craftsman pulled a reed from the reedbed,cut holes in it, and called it a human being.Since then, it's been wailing a tender agonyof parting, never mentioning the skillthat gave it life as a flute

You can'tstop dreamingjust becausethe night neverseems toend.

If you want special illumination, look upon the human face:See clearly within laughter the Essence of Ultimate Truth.

Imagination blocks you like a bolt on a door. Burn that bar. (Rumi)

Spirit is a child, the tune of dancing feet its lullaby.

i am anearthquake& dancemost heavilyupon all myfaults.

The sun never has an inferiority complex. It shines the same whether above or below.

Caution not spirit, let it roam wild; for in that natural state dance embraces divine frequency.

Through synergy of intellect, artistry and grace came into existence the blessing of a dancer.

Burdened no more is soul for whom life flows through dance and not breath.

Burdened no more is soul for whom life flows through dance like breath.

Like a sculptor, if necessary,carve a friend out of stone.Realize that your inner sight is blindand try to see a treasure in everyone.

Lovers find secret placesinside this violent worldwhere they make transactions with beauty.

I will soothe you and heal you,I will bring you roses.I too have been covered with thorns.

You dance inside my chest,where no one sees you,but sometimes I do, and thatsight becomes this art.

A wealth you cannot imagineflows through you.Do not consider what strangers say.Be secluded in your secret heart-house,that bowl of silence.

How can you be a lover of loveand not be a lover of God?It is impossible.

The less you know, the more you will be knownThe less you want, the more you will haveThe less you are, the more you will be

‪You collide with destiny caught up in the mystery of walking the halls of a mind that's only inclined to recognize & expect victory.‬

Only a handful of individuals in human history can be truly hailed as Christians, such as Tolstoy, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Rumi, Martin Luther King Jr. and a few others.

You see yourself as a shipwreck, but we see your treasure glowing inside, beneath the oceans in your eyes.

You know how it goes:at some point in your life, you fell in love with someone and had a glimpse of God.Then you abandoned life and loverand started celebratingyour love for God.

Forget your voice, sing!Forget your feet, dance!Forget your life, live!Forget yourself and be!

…the work of the (Muslim Sufi) dervish community was to open the heart, explore the mystery of union,to fiercely search for and try to say the truth,and to celebrate the glory and difficulty in being in human incarnation.

Music does not need language of words for it has movements of dance to do its translation.

Dance resides within us all. Some find it when joy conquers sorrow, others express it through celebration of movements; and then there are those... whose existence is dance,

You broughtme your darkness& I loved youwith the radianttears of athousand suns.

Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.

Did I Not Say To YouDid I not say to you, “Go not there, for I am your friend; in this mirage of annihilation I am the fountain of life?” Even though in anger you depart a hundred thousand years from me, in the end you will come to me, for I am your goal. Did I not say to you, “Be not content with worldly forms, for I am the fashioner of the tabernacle of your contentment?” Did I not say to you, “I am the sea and you are a single fish; go not to dry land, for I am your crystal sea?” Did I not say to you, “ Go not like birds to the snare; come, for I am the power of flight and your wings and feet?” Did I not say to you, “ They will waylay you and make you cold, for I am the fire and warmth and heat of your desire?” Did I not say to you, “ They will implant in you ugly qualities so that you will forget that I am the source of purity to you?” Did I not say to you, “Do not say from what direction the ser- vant’s affairs come into order?” I am the Creator without directions. If you are the lamp of the heart, know where the road is to the house; and if you are godlike of attribute, know that I am your Maser.

Explore many facets of the written word.

When I was a child, I saw God,I saw angels;I watched the mysteries of higher and lower worlds. I thought all men saw the same. At last I realized that they did not see.....

Somewhere along the way, there develops within the soul a yearning that can no longer be ignored, a craving for the great love affair. We feel it drawing ever closer. It is the greatest of them all. It cannot fail. It is all consuming. It is incomparable. It is the love affair with our own true nature and the source from which it comes. The desire is in all of us but, more often than not, it is ignored for other interests. We wrestle with each interest, trying to make it work, growing with each adventure until the light has grown bright enough for us to reach for it.

If movements were a spark every dancer would desire to light up in flames.

Show me a person who found love in his life and did not celebrate it with a dance.

And I was your moon because I shined brighter than any other star in your universe and you were my darkness. Without you I could not see the depth of my light and with you I could set the night a glow. So we needed one another—the dark and the light. Your fear. My courage. Connected, but separated. Different, but the same. A synergy that made no sense, but every bit of sense. We were neither a beginning, nor an end. We were somewhere in between our madness at sunset and the reality we awakened to with each sunrise. We were the ghosts of timing and fate. We were neither fantasy, nor reality--- we were a purpose somewhere in between.

Dance is the timeless interpretation of life.

One step, two steps, three steps; like winds of time experience joy of centuries, when movements become revelations of the dance of destinies.

Make dance the mission every moment seeks to accomplish.

Life is an affair of mystery; shared with companions of music, dance and poetry.

Dance as the narration of a magical story; that recites on lips, illuminates imaginations and embraces the most sacred depths of souls.

Sometimes in life confusion tends to arise and only dialogue of dance seems to make sense.

Dance to inspire, dance to freedom, life is about experiences so dance and let yourself become free.

Dance is the ritual of immortality.

If you opened the dictionary and searched for the meaning of a Goddess, you would find the reflection of a dancing lady.

DANCE – Defeat All Negativity (via) Creative Expression.

She who is a dancer can only sway the silk of her hair like the summer breeze.

Transcend the terrestrial; surpass the celestial, from nature’s hands when you receive the sublime pleasures of dance.

Dance is that delicacy of life radiating every particle of our existence with happiness.

Audience of angels descend in the ambiance reciting praises in your glory, when you wear your dance shoes, when you arrive at the stage and with every step you take beneath your feet heaven moves. That is the power of dance.

O wayfarer! Yearn finds quench, not in meadows, seashores or altitude of mountain peaks; but when being and dance are one.

O wayfarer! Yearn finds quench, not in meadows, seashores or altitude of mountain peaks; but when being becomes dance.

If spirit is the seed, dance is the water of its evolution.

When a dancer performs, melody transforms into a carriage, expressions turn into fuel and spirit experiences a journey to a world where passion attains fulfillment.

Limit not to only five, when the divine gifts the supreme sixth; the sense of dance

Don't you know Yet? It is your light that lights the World.

The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was.

Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.

I see the life with your sight,O" the love; you're my light.

Death has nothing to do with going away.The sun sets.The moon sets.But they are not gone.~Rumi

Take the wheat, not the measure in which it is contained

Rumi speaks of people who rely upon the written word as sometimes being no more than donkeys laden with books.

Do not think that your magic ring will work if you are not yourself Solomon.

The dance had distilled her and she had become one with the essence of all that is.

Be willing to turn your attention to that which serves you.

Notice how each particle moves.Notice how everyone has just arrived here from a journey.Notice how each wants a different food.Notice how the stars vanish as the sun comes up, and how all streams stream toward the ocean.Look at the chefs preparing special plates for everyone, according to what they need.Look at this cup that can hold the ocean.Look at those who see the face.Look through Shams’ eyes into the Water that is entirely jewels.

I keepholding upthe mirror of the sun,so you can see the stunningreflections of everythingyou’re becom-ing.

It is warmer here. Can you see the light? Trust it. It is safe. It has lived a long time. It has seen much more than you. You fight a demon that you once knew but the demon is already slain. And from the corner of your eye you will see the scattered, sacred fire reform again. Settle, settle. Peace, peace

Everything that has ever been beautiful has been burned. Like you.

...lose your mind so that you can gain a new way of knowing.

....life is the work of the spirit trying to have a human experience.

...purification was the point of such pain.

If you can love all who've betrayed you... you can taste sweetness in everything.

The point is to turn your grief into love. The roses are helping you find grace.

...anyone looking for friends without faults shall remain friendless. The choice is yours.

Late, by myself, in the boat of myself,no light and no land anywhere,cloudcover thick. I try to stayjust above the surface, yet I'm already underand living within the ocean.

The ecstatic beauty and soulful grace of Rumi’s poetry inspires human hearts to believe in possibilities beyond the predictably fatal.

Imitating others, I failed to find myself. I looked inside and discovered I only knew my name. When I stepped outside I found my real Self. ~Rumi

Sufism is therefore not 'Do as I say and not as I do', or even 'Do as I do', but 'Experience it and you will know'.

....it struck her that that perhaps everyone had the ability to see themselves in others. Even in the rocks. Even in the roses.

We both disliked rude rickshwalas, shepu bhaji in any form, group photographs at weddings, lizards, tea that has gone cold, the habit of taking newspaper to the toilet, kissing a boy who'd just smoked a cigarette et cetra. Another list. The things we loved: strong coffee, Matisse, Rumi, summer rain, bathing together, Tom Hanks, rice pancakes, Cafe Sunrise, black-and-white photographs, the first quiet moments after you wake up in the morning.

You may think just a windowBut you overtook my soul.You are not just a whisper, You are louder than my soul. (from poem Chimera)

Dear soul, don't set a high value on someone before they deserve it; You either lose them or ruin yourself...!

We and all our existences are non-entities. Thou art the absolute being whose appearance is transitory.

The degree of necessity determines the development of organs in man… therefore increase your necessity.

Sufi secrets are perceived, not understood by words.

The donkey which brought you to this door must be dismissed if you want to get through it’.

Only union with you gives joy. The rest if tearing down one building to put up another.

Love was not the point and pity was a poor man's pride.

The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: "My Companions are as stars. Whomsoever of them you follow, you will be rightly guided." When a man looks at a star, and finds his way by it, the star does not speak any word to that man. Yet, by merely looking at the star, the man knows the road from roadlessness and reaches his goal.

If I could repeat it,people passing by would be enlightened and go free.

I was afraid of the dance once, too. But I learned to embrace it and the mistakes I would make. Do not turn away from your fear. Turn toward love instead.

Rumi himself once said that counterfeit gold is only to be found because there is such a thing as real gold to be copied.

And Rumi tells us, ‘Soul receives from soul that knowledge, therefore not by book nor from tongue’.

It is necessary to note," says Rumi, "that opposite things work together, even though nominally opposed" (Fihi Ma Fihi).

Things which are seemingly opposed may in fact be working together

Even if false gold makes a man happy:At the mint it will be identified.

EPITAPH OF JALALUDIN RUMIWhen we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men.

When there is a true or useful thing, there is sure to be a counterfeit.

If you cannot sit on a throne like a king, seize, like a tent-pitcher, the rope of the Royal tent.

A short time in the presence of the Friends (the Sufis) is better than a hundred years’ sincere, obedient dedication.

It is the goldsmith who can assay the gold.

I longed to teach, but I had to wait until the desire had left me before I could really do so.

Many Americans first fell in love with the poetry of the thirteenth century teacher and spiritual leader Jelalludin Rumi during the early 1990s when the unparalleled lyrical grace, philosophical brilliance, and spiritual daring of his work took modern Western readers completely by surprise. The impact of its soulful beauty and the depth of its profound humanity were so intense that they reportedly prompted numerous individuals to spontaneously compose poetry.

We may know who we are or we may not. We may be Muslims, Jews or Christians but until our hearts become the mould for every heart we will see only our differences.

...see the blessing and beauty that you are.

The world's flattery and hypocrisy is a sweet morsel:eat less of it, for it is full of fire.Its fire is hidden while its taste is manifest,but its smoke becomes visible in the end.

Your transformation will be the miracle.

No one is born beneath this dance. This dance gives birth to you.

Even a speck of love should not go unappreciated, because, as Rumi said, love is the water of life.

You know you have received the invitation when your heart is ready to risk everything to hold the hand of God.

In one moment, we are now forever,in one moment...

Die! Die! Die in this love!If you die in this love,Your soul will be renewed. Die! Die! Don’t fear the death of that which is knownIf you die to the temporal, You will become timeless.