Every word of every tongue is
by Fakhruddin IraqiEnglish version by Unknown
Original Language Persian/Farsi
Every word of every tongue is
Love telling a story to her own ears.
Every thought in every mind,
She whispers a secret to her own Self.
Every vision in every eye,
She shows her beauty to her own sight.
Every smile on every face,
She reveals her own joy for herself to enjoy.
Love courses through everything,
No, Love is everything.
How can you say, there is no love,
when nothing but Love exists?
All that you see has appeared because of Love.
All shines from Love,
All pulses with Love,
All flows from Love--
No, once again, all IS Love!
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Every word of every tongue is
Love telling a story to her own ears.
What a wonderful opening statement! It reminds me of an insight that completely overtook me during a period of intense spiritual practice several years ago. I summed it up this way--
Don't take your joys and suffering personally.
We are -- all of us -- stories
told by God
to himself
to illuminate himself.
We think we are... something. We imagine we exist as solid beings with supremely important events that happen to us. And, on one level, that is perfectly true. But if that's the entire reality we imagine for ourselves, we've missed a deeper -- and truer -- reality, which is that we are an insubstantial play of awareness that flows through the universe. Not separate awareness-es, but a single flowing awareness that permeates everything. And that awareness expresses itself through movement and interaction that form what we might call stories. These stories contribute to universal self-illumination. Sometimes those stories are celebratory. Sometimes they are heartbreakingly tragic. But, when we stop identifying with the unfolding events, when we stop taking them personally but engage with a sense of presence and an open heart, we witness a surprising throughline of... joy, delight and, as Iraqi states, Love. Utter, all-embracing love.
(Notice that Iraqi refers to this Love as "she," "her," feminine language we too often miss out on in our descriptions of the divine -- my own quote above, included. It should be obvious to all serious spiritual seekers that the Eternal is not defined by gender, but the limitations of language tend to require genderizing. When we restrict ourselves exclusively to male references to God, however, we have blinded ourselves to half of the divine reality. A part of the spirit becomes starved. On a societal level, suppression of women becomes conceivable, since men are seen as god-like while women are not. Qualities commonly associated with the feminine principle are repressed or regarded as useless, qualities like compassion, empathy, kindness, community, service. Not only do we need more prominent women spiritual leaders, we need to restore the feminine in our language of God. Iraqi's meditation here is one of many contributions toward restoring that balance.)
Every thought in every mind,
She whispers a secret to her own Self.
Every vision in every eye,
She shows her beauty to her own sight.
Every smile on every face,
She reveals her own joy for herself to enjoy.
To the mystic in communion there is a sense of the universe as being comprised not of individuals engaged in individual actions, but of one Being engaged in internal interplay -- but with an countless variety of individual points-of-view.
Love courses through everything,
No, Love is everything.
This, I think, is the heart of Iraqi's insight. Too often we feel that the universe is loveless or that we ourselves struggle to feel love. But love in the sense that Iraqi uses, divine love, is not a feeling that comes and goes like an emotion. Love is not something we can be bereft of.
How can you say, there is no love,
when nothing but Love exists?
When we look deeply, we find that love is the foundational matter, the stuff we are all made of and exist in.
In our spiritual strivings we may cultivate a vision of a divine love that quietly touches everyone and everything. That is a basically true description, but if we want to be more precise, we can't say that love touches or runs through everything, because that suggests that this divine essence is something separate and foreign. Everything is an expression of this divine Love presence. This love does not actually surround us or fill us. In the most real sense, it is us. We are it. Everything is.
Everything we think of as existence, all the seemingly separate beings and countless objects, is really a game of appearances upon the surface of this ocean of being that is love.
All that you see has appeared because of Love
Let me emphasize that this is not merely the conceptual theorizing of philosophers or theologians, it is directly perceived in the deepest states of communion. Love is. And it is the fundamental fact of existence. Mystics feel this love as a profound, joyful interconnection with all things. The immense compassion that results is actually a form of self-awareness, for we all exist within the same shared being. Love is perceived in every cell and by all the senses. The tongue tastes it as a heavenly sweetness. The eye sees it as a golden-white ocean of light ("All shines from Love"). And the heart blooms like a summer rose.
All flows from Love--
No, once again, all IS Love!
Have a beautiful day!
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