SOUL'S BREAKFAST - Day Fifty-eight

Dear Fellow Students

Originally this poem was planned to be sent in four parts, but it has been reduced to only two. Here is the second and last part of this beautiful poem.

THE BASKET OF FRESH BREAD

Don’t look for it outside yourself.

You are the source of milk. Don’t milk others!

There is a fountain inside you.

Don’t walk around with an empty bucket.

You have a channel into the ocean,

yet you ask for water from a little pool.

Beg for the love expansion. Meditate only

on THAT. The Qur’an says,

And he is with you. (57:4)

There is a basket of fresh bread on your head,

yet you go door to door asking for crusts.

Knock on the inner door, no other.

Sloshing knee-deep in fresh riverwater,

yet you keep asking other people for waterbags.

Water is everywhere around you, but you see

only barriers that keep you from water.

The horse is beneath the rider’s thighs,

and still you ask, “Where’s my horse?"

Right there, under you!

Yes, this is a horse, but where’s the horse?

Can’t you see?

“Yes I can see, but whoever saw such a horse?”

Mad with thirst, you can’t drink from the stream

running close by your face. You are like a pearl

on the deep bottom wondering inside the shell,

Where’s the ocean?

Those mental questionings

form the barrier.

Stay bewildered inside God,

and only that.

When you are with everyone but me,

you’re with no one.

When you are with no one but me, 

you’re with everyone.

Instead of being so bound up with everyone,

be everyone.

When you become that many, you’re nothing.

Empty.

RUMI

Love

Charlie