Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi: Inner Wakefulness

<<Previous Poem | View All Poems by Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi | Next Poem >>

Inner Wakefulness

Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi, Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi poetry, Muslim / Sufi, Muslim / Sufi poetry, poetry, [TRADITION SUB2] poetry, poetry

by Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi
(1207 - 1273) Timeline

English version by
Coleman Barks

Original Language
Persian/Farsi

This place is a dream
only a sleeper considers it real
then death comes like dawn
and you wake up laughing
at what you thought
was your grief

A man goes to sleep in the town
where he has always lived
and he dreams
he's living in another town
in the dream he doesn't remember
the town he's sleeping in his bed in
he believes the reality
of the dream town
the world is that kind of sleep

Humankind is being led
along an evolving course,
through this migration
of intelligences
and though we seem
to be sleeping
there is an inner wakefulness,
that directs the dream
and that will eventually
startle us back
to the truth of
who we are

-- from The Essential Rumi, Translated by Coleman Barks

Amazon.com

/ Photo by Alice Popkorn /

Themes

Awakening

Dawn

Death

Dream

Sexual Union

Recommended Books

	Delicious Laughter: Rambunctious Teaching Stories from the Mathnawi of Jelaluddin Rumi, Translated by Coleman Barks
	East Window: Poems from Asia, Translated by W. S. Merwin
	The Essential Rumi, Translated by Coleman Barks
	A Garden Beyond Paradise: Love Poems of Rumi, by Jonathan Star / Shahram Shiva
	The Hand of Poetry: Five Mystic Poets of Persia, with Lectures by Inayat Khan, Translated by Coleman Barks

More >>

<<Previous Poem | More Poems by Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi | Next Poem >>

This place is a dream
only a sleeper considers it real

Dreams and waking up... The metaphor of being spiritually "awake" is used a lot but not always with deep reflection. The actual experience of sudden opening is very much like waking up. It's as if you've been drifting through life in a dream state and just not known it. Nothing around you has changed, but you finally, truly see things as they are. The dream-like barrier of mental filters and projections that has stifled your perception for so long falls away like a heavy blanket. You blink, look around yourself, and are surprised to realize you've been in a sort of half-seeing trance all your life... and now you are awake.

Perhaps just as surprising -- and much more confusing to the intellect -- is the simultaneous recognition that while you were in that dream state, there was still some part of your awareness that was always fully awake, quietly, patiently watching in the background. It's just that now that inner wakefulness has come to the forefront. ...A reminder to us that we don't really need to "wake up;" instead, we just need to get out of the way of that part of ourselves that is already awake.

and though we seem
to be sleeping
there is an inner wakefulness

And from a purely poetic point of view, I really like the lines--

Humankind is being led
along an evolving course,
through this migration
of intelligences

To me this suggests that each experience, each "dream," each person's life is part of a grand migration of the human spirit, a journey of deepening remembrance and renewal.

Poetry Chaikhana Sacred Poetry from Around the World

Poetry Chaikhana
Sacred Poetry from Around the World