Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Awakening the Beloved Within


I was just in Asheville, NC teaching my Awakening the Ecstatic Body: Opening the Path to Bliss workshop. Everyone at it had a powerful, transformational experience. One of the journeys I took people on, was to meet their Inner Lover. The Inner Lover helps you to cultivate your ability to love yourself and others unconditionally. (Learn about my upcoming events at TantraForAwakening.org .)

I also taught another powerful tool for “awakening the beloved within,” the timeless art of eye gazing.  This simple practice allowed, Jallaludin Rumi, the 13th century Sufi poet, to become fully awakened. His life was radically changed when he met Shams of Tabriz. Immediately, they recognized they were destined to dive deep into the pool of the Beloved together. They went into a private retreat and both emerged several months later in a state of ecstatic bliss. Rumi’s poems tell us that this awakening occurred through their shared experience of eye gazing. Below are some examples of these poems.

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

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere,
they're in each other all along.

From Essential Rumi
by Coleman Barks

Suddenly the drunken sweetheart appeared out of my door.
She drank a cup of ruby wine and sat by my side.
Seeing and holding the lockets of her hair
My face became all eyes, and my eyes all hands.

From Thief of Sleep
by Shahram Shiva

The Freshness

When it's cold and raining,
you are more beautiful.

And the snow brings me
even closer to your lips.

The inner secret, that which was never born,
you are that freshness, and I am with you now.

I can't explain the goings,
or the comings. You enter suddenly,

and I am nowhere again.
Inside the majesty.

From Soul of Rumi
by Coleman Barks

With the Beloved's water of life, no illness remains
In the Beloved's rose garden of union, no thorn remains.
They say there is a window from one heart to another
How can there be a window where no wall remains?

From Thief of Sleep
by Shahram Shiva

 Some Kiss We Want

There is some kiss we want with 
our whole lives, the touch of 

spirit on the body. Seawater
begs the pearl to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately
it needs some wild darling! At

night, I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its
face against mine. 

Close the language- door and
open the love window. The moon
won't use the door, only the window.

From Soul of Rumi
by Coleman Barks

When your chest is free of your limiting ego,
Then you will see the ageless Beloved.
You can not see yourself without a mirror;
Look at the Beloved, He is the brightest mirror.

From Thief of Sleep
by Shahram Shiva

Above poems from the books, Essential Rumi and Soul of Rumi both translated by Coleman Barks and Thief of Sleep  translated by Shahram Shiva.

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