Reynold A. Nicholson - The Voice within your Hearts

Deep in our hearts the Light of Heaven is shining
Upon a soundless Sea without a shore.
Oh, happy they who found it in resigning
The images of all that men adore.
Blind eyes, to dote on shadows of things fair
Only at last to curse their fatal lure,
Like Harut and Marut, that Angel-pair
Who deemed themselves the purest of the pure.
Our ignorance and self-will and vicious pride
Destroy the harmony of part and whole.
In vain we seek with lusts unmortified
A vision of the One Eternal Soul.
Love, Love alone can kill what seemed so dead,
The frozen snake of passion. Love alone,
By tearful prayer and fiery longing fed,
Reveals a knowledge schools have never known.
God’s lovers learn from Him the secret ways
Of Providence, the universal plan.
Living in Him, they ever sing His praise
Who made the myriad worlds of Time for Man.
Evil they knew not, for in Him there’s none;
Yet without evil how should good be seen?
Love answers: “Feel with me, with me be one;
Where I am nought stands up to come between.”
There are degrees of heavenly light in souls;
Prophets and Saints have shown the path they trod,
Its starting points and stages, halts and goals,
All leading to the single end in God.
Love will not let his faithful servants tire,
Immortal Beauty draws them on and on
From glory unto glory drawing nigher
At each remove and loving to be drawn.
When Truth shines out words fail and nothing tell;
Now hear the Voice within your hearts. Farewell.

1868-1945. Professor of Arabic. 

R.A. Nicholson was a scholar of both Islamic literature and Islamic mysticism, and widely regarded as one of the greatest scholars and translators of Rumi, the 13th-century Persian Sufi mystic.

Nicholson was born in Yorkshire and educated at Aberdeen and Cambridge.  He became a lecturer in the Persian language (1902-26) and Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic at Cambridge (1926-1933). He is considered to have been a leading scholar in Islamic literature and Islamic mysticism who exercised a lasting influence on Islamic studies.

His most influential books were the Literary History of The Arabs (1907), The Mystics of Islam (1914), and his exhaustive eight-volume work on Rumi's Masnavi.  He also translated Muhammad Iqbal's first philosophical Persian poetry book Asrar-i-Khudi into English as The Secrets of the Self.

Jennifer Welwood - Renuncation

There will always be voices that promise you greatness and glory:
They call out from the worldly marketplace;
They call out from the spiritual marketplace;
They call out from the fill-your-holes-marketplace;
They call out from the bigger-better-more marketplace.

Do not buy their false promises, or purchase their ephemeral wares;
What fulfills for a moment is not worth the price of your soul.
There are heights that will lift you, but not when you try to ascend them;
There are powers that will fill you, but not when you make them your own.
There are treasures, and there are imitations of treasures.
If you have lost your true gold, at least turn away from the glitter.

Want only what is true.
This will lead you to the well of your deepest sorrows.
Follow that passageway, all the way down;
Become the dark emptiness of your absent core.
Be still. Don’t measure the waiting.
Be still. Let the waiting become a fire.
Be still. Let the fire show you its secret heart:
A strand of clear light running through you.
Gather yourself there, and the luminous universe opens.
In that vast expanse, fathomless, infinite ocean of light,
Lose yourself, and find yourself, and become what you already are.

http://jenniferwelwood.com/ 

Hafiz - Not with wings

Here soar
Not with wings,



But with your moving hands and feet
And sweating brows--



Standing by your Beloved's side
Reaching out to comfort this world



With your cup of solace
Drawn from your vast reservoir of Truth.



Here soar
Not with your eyes and senses



That turn their backs
On the earth's sweet stumbling dance
Which needs you.



Here love, O here love,
With your mouth tender and open upon your lover,



And with your heart on duty
To the souls of rivers, children, forest animals,
All the shy feathered ones and laughing, jumping,
Shining fish.



O here, pilgrim, Love
On this holy battleground of life



Where there are bleeding men
Who are calling for a sacred drink,



A gentle word or touch from a man
Or God.



Hafiz, why just serve and play with angels?
They are already content.



Brew your knowledge well for men
With aching minds and guts,



And for those wayfarers who have gained
The rare courageous thirsts
That can never be relinquished
Until Union!



Hafiz,
Leave your recipes in golden drums.



Tie those barrels to the backs of camels
Who will keep circumambulating the worlds,



Giving nourishment
To all our tender wondrous spheres.



O here Love, O love right here.
Find your happiness, dear wayfarer,



With your beautiful lips and body
So sweetly opened,



Yielding their vital gifts upon
This magnificent
Earth. 

Ibn Ata’ Illah - How can you imagine ?

How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is the One who is manifest by everything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is the One who is made manifest in everything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is the One who is manifest to everything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He was the One who was Manifest before there was anything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is more manifest than anything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is the One with whom there is nothing else?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is the One who is nearer to you than anything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when if it had not been for Him, there would not have been anything?

A marvel!
See how existence becomes manifest in non-existence!
How the in-time holds firm alongside Him whose attribute is eternal!

  from Ibn ‘Ata’ Illah the Book of Wisdom/Kwaja Abdullah Ansari Intimate Conversations, Translated by Victor Danner / Translated by Wheeler M. Thackston