Feb 27 2026
Rumi – With Us
With Us
by Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi
English version by Nevit Ergin with Camille Helminski
Even if you’re not a seeker,
still, follow us, keep searching with us.
Even if you don’t know how
to play and sing,
you’ll become like us;
with us you’ll start singing and dancing.
Even if you are Qarun, the richest of kings,
when you fall in love,
you’ll become a beggar.
Though you are a sultan, like us you’ll become a slave.
One candle of this gathering
is worth a hundred candles; its light is as great.
Either you are alive or dead.
You’ll come back to life with us.
Unbind your feet.
Show the rose garden —
start laughing with your whole body,
like a rose, like us.
Put on the mantle for a moment
and see the ones whose hearts are alive.
Then, throw out your satin dresses
and cover yourself with a cloak, like us.
When a seed falls into the ground,
it germinates, grows, and becomes a tree:
if you understand these symbols,
you’ll follow us, and fall to the ground, with us.
God’s Shams of Tabriz says
to the heart’s bud,
“If your eyes are opened,
you’ll see the things worth seeing.”
— from The Rumi Collection (Shambhala Library), by Kabir Helminski / Nevit Ergin
/ Image by Fahaz Ahanin /
It has been too long since we last enjoyed a poem by Rumi together. To call his material “poems” sometimes sounds overly formal to my ears. Rumi didn’t sit at a table with a pen and inkpot composing poetry. According to tradition, he would walk round and round a column or tent pole — and the words just poured out of him. These are utterances, revelations, The words of Rumi should sing in the heart and speak directly to the soul.
Even if you’re not a seeker,
still, follow us, keep searching with us.
What I like about this opening phrase is how it immediately short circuits spiritual inertia, not by exhorting us to renewed effort, but simply by participation — and by ignoring our self labels. We don’t have to be a “seeker,” we just have to seek.
The seeking itself is really a celebration:
Even if you don’t know how
to play and sing,
you’ll become like us;
with us you’ll start singing and dancing.
It’s a popup rave, and you only know it exists once you show up and start dancing!
when you fall in love,
you’ll become a beggar.
We spend so much of our lives in pretense, in constructing a presentation of who we are that we show to the world. But when we encounter real love, all of that falls away, and we gladly follow love’s caravan, living happily on whatever gets tossed our way.
You’ll come back to life with us.
New life is found this way. An amazing thing! We thought we were alive, but were not. When that false self “dies,” that’s when we truly understand what life is.
Unbind your feet.
Rumi tells us twice to unbind our feet. Why do we want to unbind our feet? What is important about going barefoot? The feet can be awkward, embarassing, vulnerable, to some even shameful. To unbind them is to reveal them, to be naked, to be honest — and to be present on the living earth.
Show the rose garden —
start laughing with your whole body,
like a rose, like us.
The rose is an important symbol that keeps coming up in Sufi poetry. I think of it as representing the awakened heart, the way it buds and blossoms circling in toward an infinitely layered center, offering its wine-like perfume to the world. So when we laugh with our whole body “like a rose” we experience the full-bodied, full-reality delight that is only possible through the awakened heart. All of the imperfections, all of the terrors of the world, and all of the beauties and simple joys too are all somehow reconciled in the heart, the rose. That’s when we start laughing with our whole body.
“If your eyes are opened,
you’ll see the things worth seeing.”
Recommended Books: Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi
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Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi
Afghanistan & Turkey (1207 – 1273) Timeline |
