Michael T. Bee [ESI~Kindle]: September 2015

This is my second time reading. Still a page turner. Here are my highlights/notes:
The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi by Elif Shafak

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You have 14 notes

Last annotated on September 14, 2015
In many ways the twenty-first century is not that different from the thirteenth century. Both will be recorded in history as times of unprecedented religious clashes, cultural misunderstandings, and a general sense of insecurity and fear of the Other. At times like these, the need for love is greater than ever. Read more at location 352
Note: -40 Rules of Love
there is a thin line between losing yourself in God and losing your mind. Read more at location 509

“It is the first rule, brother,” I said. “How we see God is a direct reflection of how we see ourselves. If God brings to mind mostly fear and blame, it means there is too much fear and blame welled inside us. If we see God as full of love and compassion, so are we.” Read more at location 534

then added, measuring each word, “You can become a lamb again, because you still have it in you.” Read more at location 585

It was always like this. When you spoke the truth, they hated you. The more you talked about love, the more they hated you. Read more at location 589

Caliph Harun ar-Rashid
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I offered the dervish warm goat milk, sweetened figs, and filled dates, all of which he politely refused. When asked his name, he introduced himself as Shams of Tabriz and said he was a wandering dervish searching for God high and low. “And were you able to find Him?” I inquired. A shadow crossed his face as the dervish nodded and said, “Indeed, He was with me all along.”
Read more at location 811
Note: https://www.facebook.com/MichaelTBee/posts/10207184965245625
Cities are erected on spiritual columns. Like giant mirrors, they reflect the hearts of their residents. If those hearts darken and lose faith, cities will lose their glamour. It happens, and it happens all the time.”
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“Each and every reader comprehends the Holy Qur’an on a different level in tandem with the depth of his understanding. There are four levels of insight. The first level is the outer Read more at location 852

meaning and it is the one that the majority of the people are content with. Next is the Batini—the inner level. Third, there is the inner of the inner. And the fourth level is so deep it cannot be put into words and is therefore bound to remain indescribable.”
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You scolded that poor shepherd and failed to realize how dear he was to Me. He might not be saying the right things in the right way, but he was sincere. His heart was pure and his intentions good. I was pleased with him. His words might have been blasphemy to your ears, but to Me they were sweet blasphemy.”
Read more at location 876
Note: https://www.facebook.com/MichaelTBee/posts/10207184965245625
Some people make the mistake of confusing “submission” with “weakness,” whereas it is anything but. Submission is a form of peaceful acceptance of the terms of the universe, including the things we are currently unable to change or comprehend.
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May love find you when you least expect, where you least expect.
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“One of the rules says, You can study God through everything and everyone in the universe, because God is not confined in a mosque, synagogue, or church. But if you are still in need of knowing where exactly His abode is, there is only one place to look for Him: in the heart of a true lover.
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“Intellect and love are made of different materials,” he said. “Intellect ties people in knots and risks nothing, but love dissolves all tangles and risks everything. Intellect is always cautious and advises, ‘Beware too much ecstasy,’ whereas love says, ‘Oh, never mind! Take the plunge!’ Intellect does not easily break down, whereas love can effortlessly reduce itself to rubble. But treasures are hidden among ruins. A broken heart hides treasures.”
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Note:

We have not much time to gladden the hearts
of those who travel the way with us...
Be swift to love make haste to bee kind -Henry Amiel

Most of the problems of the world stem from linguistic mistakes and simple misunderstandings. Don’t ever take words at face value. When you step into the zone of love, language as we know it becomes obsolete. That which cannot be put into words can only be grasped through silence.
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“Believers are each other’s mirrors.”
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Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will
open up a new path only for you. Be thankful! It is easy to be thankful when all is well. A Sufi is thankful not only for what he has been given but also for all that he has been denied.
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Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process. What does patience mean? It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn. Impatience means to be so shortsighted as to not be able to see the outcome. The lovers of God never run out of patience, for they know that time is needed for the crescent moon to become full.
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The evening before Shams left, we took a long walk around the mulberry trees where I grow silkworms. Old habits rarely die. Painfully delicate and surprisingly strong, silk resembles love. I told Shams how the silkworms destroy the silk they produce as they emerge from their cocoons. This is why the farmers have to make a choice between the silk and the silkworm. More often than not, they kill the silkworm while it is inside the cocoon in order to pull the silk out intact. It takes the lives of hundreds of silkworms to produce one silk scarf.
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The evening was now coming to an end. A chilly wind blew in our direction, and I shivered. In my old age, I get cold easily, but I knew it wasn’t my age that caused this shiver. It was because I realized this was the last time Shams would stand in my garden. We will not see each other again. Not in this world. He, too, must have sensed it, for there was now sorrow in his eyes. This morning at the crack of dawn, he came to kiss my hand and ask for my blessings. I was surprised to see he had cut his long dark hair and shaved his beard, but he didn’t offer an explanation and I didn’t ask. Before he left, he said his part in this story resembled the silkworm. He and Rumi would retreat into a cocoon of Divine Love, only to come out when the time was ripe and the precious silk woven. But eventually, for the silk to survive, the silkworm had to die.
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East, west, south, or north makes little difference. No matter what your destination, just be sure to make every journey a journey within. If you travel within, you’ll travel the whole wide world and beyond.
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The midwife knows that when there is no pain, the way for the baby cannot be opened and the mother cannot give birth. Likewise, for a new Self to be born, hardship is necessary. Just as clay needs to go through intense heat to become strong, Love can only be perfected in pain.
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The quest for Love changes us. There is no seeker among those who search for Love who has not matured on the way. The moment you start looking for Love, you start to change within and without.”
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There are more fake gurus and false teachers in this world than the number of stars in the visible universe. Don’t confuse power-driven, self-centered people with true mentors. A genuine spiritual master will not direct your attention to himself or herself and will not expect absolute obedience or utter admiration from you, but instead will help you to appreciate and admire your inner self. True mentors are as transparent as glass. They let the Light of God pass through them.”
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I told her not to worry and to go back to sleep. There was nothing she could do. Our dreams were part of our destiny, and they would run their course as God willed it.
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“Come back, beloved. Where are you?”
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Why, then, do I feel this void inside me, growing deeper and wider with each passing day? It gnaws at my soul like a disease and accompanies me wherever I go, as quiet as a mouse and just as ravenous.
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Before passing through the gates of a town I’ve never visited, I take a minute to salute its saints-the dead and the living, the known and the hidden.
Read more at location 1605
Note:
That is interesting. A sense of Heritage comes to a place from the people
who dwell in our midst both the living and the dead.

Never in my life have I arrived at a new place without getting the blessing of its saints first. It makes no difference to me whether that place belongs to Muslims, Christians, or Jews. I believe that the saints are beyond such trivial nominal distinctions. Read more at location 1606

A saint belongs to all humanity.
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Note: ... No man is an island! A man's deeds live after him

Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?
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«God is busy with the completion of your work, both outwardly and inwardly. He is fully occupied with you.
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Every human being is a work in progress that is slowly but inexorably moving toward perfection. We are each an unfinished work of art both waiting and striving to be completed. God deals with each of us separately because humanity is a fine art of skilled penmanship where every single dot is equally important for the entire picture.”
Read more at location 1641

...But I did lose something. I lost my joy.” “What’s that got to do with Rumi?” I asked. Dropping his gaze back to his ox, the peasant murmured tonelessly, “Everyone says if you listen to Rumi preach, your sadness will be cured.” Personally, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with sadness. Just the opposite—hypocrisy made people happy, and truth made them sad. But I didn’t tell this to the peasant. Instead I said, “Why don’t I join you until Konya, and you’ll tell me more about Rumi?” I tied my horse’s reins to the cart and climbed in to sit beside the peasant, glad to see that the ox didn’t mind the additional load. One way or the other, it walked the same excruciatingly slow walk. The peasant offered me bread and goat cheese. We ate as we talked. In this state, while the sun blazed in an indigo sky, and under the watchful eyes of the town’s saints, I entered Konya. “Take good care, my friend,” I said as I jumped off the cart and loosened the reins of my horse. “Make sure you come to the sermon!” the peasant yelled expectantly. I nodded as I waved good-bye. “Inshallah.” Although I was eager to listen to the sermon and dying to meet Rumi, I wanted to spend some time in the city first and learn what the townspeople thought about the great preacher. I wanted to see him through foreign eyes, kind and unkind, loving and unloving, before I looked on him with my own. Hasan the Beggar
KONYA, OCTOBER 17, 1244 Believe it or not, they call this purgatory on earth “holy suffering.” I am a leper stuck in limbo. Neither the dead nor the living want me among them. Mothers point me out on the streets to scare their misbehaving toddlers, and children throw stones at me. Artisans chase me from their storefronts to ward off the bad luck that follows me everywhere, and pregnant women turn their faces away whenever they set eyes on me, fearing that their babies will be born defective. None of these people seem to realize that as keen as they are to avoid
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It’s easy to love a perfect God, unblemished and infallible that He is. What is far more difficult is to love fellow human beings with all their imperfections and defects. Remember, one can only know what one is capable of loving. There is no wisdom without love. Unless we learn to love God’s creation, we can neither truly love nor truly know God.
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“Real filth is the one inside. The rest simply washes off. There is only one type of dirt that cannot be cleansed with pure waters, and that is the stain of hatred and bigotry contaminating the soul. You can purify your body through abstinence and fasting, but only love will purify your heart.”
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The whole universe is contained within a single human being-you. Everything that you see around, including the things you might not be fond of and even the people you despise or abhor, is present within you in varying degrees. Therefore, do not look for Sheitan outside yourself either. The devil is not an extraordinary force that attacks from without. It is an ordinary voice within. If you get to know yourself fully, facing with honesty and hardness both your dark and bright sides, you will arrive at a supreme form of consciousness. When a person knows himself or herself, he or she knows God.”
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If you want to change the way others treat you, you should first change the way you treat yourself. Unless you learn to love yourself, fully and sincerely, there is no way you can be loved. Once you achieve that stage, however, be thankful for every thorn that others might throw at you. It is a sign that you will soon be showered in roses.”
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“Fret not where the road will take you. Instead concentrate on the first step. That’s the hardest part and that’s what you are responsible for. Once you take that step let everything do what it naturally does and the rest will follow. Do not go with the flow. Be the flow.”
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We were all created in His image, and yet we were each created different
and unique. No two people are alike. No two hearts beat to the same rhythm. If God had wanted everyone to be the same, He would have made it so. Therefore, disrespecting differences and imposing your thoughts on others is tantamount to disrespecting God’s holy scheme.”
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When a true lover of God goes into a tavern, the tavern becomes his chamber of prayer, but when a wine bibber goes into the same chamber, it becomes his tavern. In everything we do, it is our hearts that make the difference, not our outer appearances. Sufis do not judge other people on how they look or who they are. When a Sufi stares at someone, he keeps both eyes closed and instead opens a third eye—the eye that sees the inner realm.”
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Life is a temporary loan, and this world is nothing but a sketchy imitation of Reality. Only children would mistake a toy for the real thing. And yet human beings either become infatuated with the toy or disrespectfully break it and throw it aside. In this life stay away from all kinds of extremities, for they will destroy your inner balance.
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Sufis do not go to extremes. A Sufi always remains mild and moderate.
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Isn’t it the same with the garden
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love? How can love be worthy of its name if one selects solely the pretty things and leaves out the hardships? It is easy to enjoy the good and dislike the bad. Anybody can do that. The real challenge is to love the good and the bad together, not because you need to take the rough with the smooth but because you need to go beyond such descriptions and accept love in its entirety. Read more at location 2474

And how about you, great preacher? Tell me, how big is your cup? Read more at location 2549

“The fifth element,” she muttered to herself several times during the day. “Just accept the void!” Read more at location 2833

The human being has a unique place among God’s creation. “I breathed into him of My Spirit,” God says. Each and every one of us without exception is designed to be God’s delegate on earth. Ask yourself, just how often do you Read more at location 2917

They keep reminding everyone that on the Day of Judgment all human beings Read more at location 2929

will be forced to walk the Bridge of Sirat, thinner than a hair, sharper than a razor. Unable to cross the bridge, the sinful will tumble into the pits of hell underneath, where they will suffer forever. Those who have led a virtuous life will make it to the other end of the bridge, where they will be rewarded with exotic fruits, sweet waters, and virgins. This, in a nutshell, is their notion of afterlife. Read more at location 2930

Hell is in the here and now. So is heaven. Quit worrying about hell or dreaming about heaven, as they are both present inside this Read more at location 2934

very moment. Every time we fall in love, we ascend to heaven. Every time we hate, envy, or fight someone, we tumble straight into the fires of hell. This is what Rule Number Twenty-five is about. Read more at location 2935

“Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi or zen. Not any religion or cultural system. I am not of the East, nor of the West.... My Read more at location 2948

place is placeless, a trace of the traceless.” Read more at location 2950

Bountiful is your life, full and complete. Or so you think, until someone comes along and makes you realize what you have been missing all this time. Like a mirror that reflects what is absent rather than present, he shows you the void in your soul—the void you have resisted seeing. That person can be a lover, a friend, or a spiritual master. Sometimes it can be a child to look after. What matters is to find the soul that will complete yours. Read more at location 3067

Is there a way to grasp what love means without becoming a lover first? Love cannot be explained. It can only be experienced. Love cannot be explained, yet it explains all. Read more at location 3104

“The Qur’an is a gushing river,” he said. “Those who look at it from a distance see only one river. But for those swimming in it, there are four currents. Like different types of fish, some of us swim closer to the surface while some others swim in deep waters down below.” “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I said, although I was beginning to. “Those who like to swim close to the surface are content with the outer meaning of the Qur’an. Read more at location 3156

Many people are like that. They take the verses too literally. No wonder when they read a verse like the Nisa, they arrive at the conclusion that men are held superior to women. Because that is exactly what they want to see.” “How about the other currents?” I asked. Shams sighed softly, and I couldn’t help noticing his mouth, as mysterious and inviting as a secret garden. “There are three more currents. The second one is deeper than the first, but still close to the surface. As your awareness expands, so does your grasp of the Qur’an. But for that to happen, you need to take the plunge.” Listening to him, I felt both empty and fulfilled at the same time. “What happens when you take the plunge?” I asked cautiously.
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“The third undercurrent is the esoteric, batini, reading. If you read the Nisa with your inner eye open, you’ll see that the verse is not about women and men but about womanhood and manhood. And each and every one of us, including you and me, has both femininity and masculinity in us, in varying degrees and shades. Only when we learn to embrace both can we attain harmonious Oneness.” “Are you telling me that I have manliness inside me?” “Oh, yes, definitely. And I have a female side, too.”
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This world is like a snowy mountain that echoes your voice. Whatever you speak, good or evil, will somehow come back to you. Therefore, if there is someone who harbors ill thoughts about you, saying similarly bad things about him will only make matters worse. You will be locked in a vicious circle of malevolent energy. Instead for forty days and nights say and think nice things about that person. Everything will be different at the end of forty days, because you will be different inside.”
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The past is an interpretation. The future is an illusion.
The world does not move through time as if it were a straight line, proceeding from the past to the future. Instead time moves through and within us, in endless spirals.
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Eternity does not mean infinite time, but simply timelessness. If you want to experience eternal illumination, put the past and the future out of your mind and remain within the present moment.
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“The fourth level is unspeakable,” he said. “There is a stage after which language fails us. When you step into the zone of love, you won’t need language.”
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Destiny doesn’t mean that your life has been strictly predetermined. Therefore, to leave everything to fate and to not actively contribute to the music of the universe is a sign of sheer ignorance. “The music of the universe is all-pervading and it is composed on forty different levels. “Your destiny is the level where you will play your tune. You might not change your instrument but how well to play is entirely in your hands.”
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“In this world take pity on three kinds of people. The rich man who has lost his fortune, the well-respected man who has lost his respectability, and the wise man who is surrounded by ignorants.”
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The true Sufi is such that even when he is unjustly accused, attacked, and condemned from all sides, he patiently endures, uttering not a single bad word about any of his critics. A Sufi never apportions blame. How can there be opponents or rivals or even “others” when there is no “self” in the first place? How can there be anyone to blame when there is only One?
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Then a British anthropologist I met in the Saharan Atlas gave me an idea. He asked me if I had ever considered being the first Western photographer to sneak into the holiest cities of Islam. I didn’t know what he was talking about. Read more at location 3659

He said there was a Saudi law that strictly forbade non-Muslims from entering Mecca and Medina. No Christians or Jews were allowed, unless one found a way to break in to the city and take pictures. If caught, you could go to jail, or even worse. I was all ears. The thrill of trespassing into forbidden territory, achieving what no one else had accomplished before, the surge of adrenaline, not to mention the fame and money that would come at the end ... I was attracted to the idea like a bee drawn to a pot of honey. Read more at location 3660
Note: Sir Richard Burton, a 19th century explorer made this same trip-disguised as a Sufi! He wrote about it extensively.
matter. Shams of Tabriz had said that faith and love turned human beings into heroes because they removed all the fear and anxiety from their hearts. Read more at location 3709

On the Sufi path, first you discover the art of being alone amid the crowd. Next you discover the crowd within your solitude—the voices inside you. Read more at location 3737

Of all the books I read that long summer, it was the collected poems of Rumi that had the most impact on me. Read more at location 3741

I was already where I wanted to be. All I needed was to stay and look within. This new part of my life I call my encounter with the letter f in the word “Sufi.” Read more at location 3749

As soon as he was out of the room, I fell to the ground in a state of profound ecstasy. Grabbing the amber rosary Rumi had left behind, I thanked God over and over again for giving me a true companion and prayed that his beautiful soul would never sober up from the drunkenness of Divine Love. Read more at location 3781

Sometimes it is necessary to destroy all attachments in order to win over your ego. If we are too attached to our family, our position in society, even our local school or mosque, to the extent that they stand in the way of Union with God, we need to tear those attachments down.” Read more at location 3809

“If the wine drinker Has a deep gentleness in him, He will show that, Read more at location 3830

When drunk. But if he has hidden anger and arrogance, Those appear, And since most people do, Wine is forbidden to everyone.” Read more at location 3830

“If you want to strengthen your faith, you will need to soften inside. For your faith to be rock solid, your heart needs to be as soft as a feather. Through an illness, accident, loss, or fright, one way or another, we all are faced with incidents that teach us how to become less selfish and judgmental, Read more at location 3862

and more compassionate and generous. Yet some of us learn the lesson and manage to become milder, while some others end up becoming even harsher than before. The only way to get closer to Truth is to expand your heart so that it will encompass all humanity and still have room for more Love.” Read more at location 3864

Nothing should stand between yourself and God. Not imams, priests, rabbis, or any other custodians of moral or religious leadership. Not spiritual masters, not even your faith. Believe in your values and your rules, but never lord them over others. If you keep breaking other people’s hearts, whatever religious duty you perform is no good. “Stay away from all sorts of idolatry, for they will blur your vision. Let God and only God be your guide. Learn the Truth, my friend, but be careful not to make a fetish out of your truths.” Read more at location 3903

“God wants us to be modest and unpretentious,” I said. “And He wants to be known,” Rumi added softly. “He wants us to know Him with every fiber of our being. That is why it is better to be watchful and sober than to be drunk and dizzy.” Read more at location 3914

The Wine of Love made our heads spin gently, and I realized with glee and gratitude that the wind no longer whispered despair. Read more at location 3918

“Rumi says we don’t need to hunt for love outside ourselves. All we need to do is to eliminate the barriers inside that keep us away from love.” Read more at location 3971

Shams now turned to us with a swift, sardonic glance. “A man with many opinions but no questions! There’s something so wrong with that.” Read more at location 4046

Qur’an says human beings are the most dignified. We are higher than the highest, but also lower than the lowest. If we could grasp the full meaning of this, we would stop looking for Sheitan outside and instead focus on ourselves. What we need is sincere self-examination. Not being on the watch for the faults of others.” Read more at location 4070
Note: [15] * Do not love the world or the things in the world.* If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. [16] For all that is in the world—* the desires of the flesh and* the desires of the eyes and pride of life* —is not from the Father but is from the world. [17] And* the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
While everyone in this world strives to get somewhere and become someone, only to leave it all behind after death, you aim for the supreme stage of nothingness. Live this life as light and empty as the number zero. We are no different from a pot. It is not the decorations outside but the emptiness inside that holds us straight. Just like that, it is not what we aspire to achieve but the consciousness of nothingness that keeps us going.” Read more at location 4232

mordant Read more at location 4353

By and large, the narrow-minded say that dancing is sacrilege. They think God gave us music—not only the music we make with our voices and instruments but the music underlying all forms of life, and then He forbade our listening to it. Don’t they see that all nature is singing? Everything in this universe moves with a rhythm—the pumping of the heart, the flaps of a bird’s wings, the wind on a stormy night, a blacksmith working iron, or Read more at location 4382

the sounds an unborn baby is surrounded with inside the womb.... Everything partakes, passionately and spontaneously, in one magnificent melody. The dance of the whirling dervishes is a link in that perpetual chain. Just as a drop of seawater carries within it the entire ocean, our dance both reflects and shrouds the secrets of the cosmos. Read more at location 4385

The honey-colored hat symbolized the tombstone, the long white skirt the shroud, and the black cloak the grave. Our dance projected how Sufis discard the entire Self, like shedding a piece of old skin. Read more at location 4390

Listen to the reed and the tale it tells, how it sings of separation: Ever since they cut me from the reed bed, my wail has caused men and women to weep. Read more at location 4401

When the music ceased, we jointly bowed to the essential forces of the universe: fire, wind, earth, and water, and the fifth element, the void. Read more at location 4405

Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven’t loved enough. Read more at location 4411

Through our companionship Rumi and I had experienced an exceptional beauty and learned what it was like to encounter infinity through two mirrors reflecting each other endlessly. But the old maxim still applies: Where there is love, there is bound to be heartache. Read more at location 4420

Life is about perfection. Every incident that happens, no matter how colossal or small, and every hardship that we endure is an aspect of a divine plan that works to that end. Struggle is intrinsic to being human. That is why it says in the Qur’an, Certainly we will show Our ways to those who struggle on Our way. There is no such thing as coincidence in God’s scheme. And it was no coincidence that Shams of Tabriz crossed my path on that day in October almost two years ago. Read more at location 4549

Marvelous sun of Tabriz! Where are you? Read more at location 4597

a Christian hermit named Francis. He was a man whose inner equilibrium did not tilt easily, a man who knew the meaning of submission. And since Islam means the inner peace that comes from submission, to me Francis was more Muslim than many who claim to be so. Read more at location 4601

Submission does not mean being weak or passive. It leads to neither fatalism nor capitulation. Just the opposite. True power resides in submission—a power that comes from within. Those who submit to the divine essence of life will live in unperturbed tranquillity and peace even when the whole wide world goes through turbulence after turbulence. Read more at location 4603

I wanted to keep traveling the world, meet new people and see new cities. I had liked Damascus, too, and could easily stay there until the next winter. Traveling to a new place often engendered a dreadful sense of loneliness and sadness in the soul of a man. But with God by my side, I was content and fulfilled in my solitude. Read more at location 4619

Yet I knew too well that my heart was in Konya. I missed Rumi so much that it was too painful even to utter his name. At the end of the day, what difference would it make which city I stayed in, as long as Rumi was not beside me? Wherever he lived, there was my qibla. Read more at location 4622

moved my king on the chessboard. Francis’s eyes flew open as he Read more at location 4624

detected the fatal position. But in chess, just as in life, there were moves that you made for the sake of winning and there were moves you made because they were the right thing to do. Read more at location 4624
Note: Fore shadowing his own death. God wins but it is in Shams keeping on his Kismet he conquers his nafs and goes to again to where his heart and his death meet
I can’t help suspecting he has the eyes of a man who has seen it all and doesn’t want Read more at location 4639

struggle anymore. But I think a deeper Read more at location 4640

has been taking place in Rumi. Read more at location 4640

Rumi became even more anxious and withdrawn than before. I think I know the reason. Having lost Shams once, he is afraid of losing him again. I can understand as no one else can, because I, too, am afraid of losing him. Read more at location 4642
Note: Love has a sense of death but holds on like this is almost the negative of Robert Browning and Prospice
new gaze came to their eyes, Read more at location 4655

and they took on a new demeanor, to such an extent that people started to treat them differently. Even little children could tell the difference between a married woman and an unmarried one.
Read more at location 4656
Note: What is this about! A sense of maturity? Fulfill ment? The qibla of Love again? When in love the heart is always turned towards ones lover. "An ever fixed mark the star of your heart that sets your way toward home"

Tahafut al-Tahafut.
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Note: The Thomas Aquinas of Islam! When i read this
i received a cold thrill-shudder. Which rules!?
Time looping back-everything connected.

“Aladdin?” I repeated in shock. But what made him think I wanted to marry Aladdin? He was like a brother to me.
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Note: The very words of Alladin's prepared argument to Rumi

“Shams says in love all boundaries are blurred,”
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Broaching a subject as deep and delicate as love is like trying to capture a gusty wind. You can feel the harm the wind is about to cause, but there is no way to slow it down. After a while I didn’t ask Kimya any other questions, not because I was convinced by her answers but because I saw in her eyes a woman in love.
Read more at location 4694

They kept quarreling among themselves, feeling more resentful and bitter with every passing minute, until a Sufi who happened to pass by interrupted them. With the money collected the Sufi bought a bunch of grapes. He then put the grapes in a container and pressed hard. He made the travelers drink the juice and threw away the skin, because what mattered was the essence of the fruit, not its outer form.
Read more at location 4716

“What I am trying to say is, there is no reason for you to miss Mother Mary, because you don’t need to abandon her in the first place. As a Muslim woman, you can still feel attached to her.”
Read more at location 4721

Note: Wow! People talk about ecumenicism this is the traveled
way of hearts blood in each of us seeking God. Truly God
has set eternity in the heart of man.

My heart warmed to Shams, and for the first time since he’d come to our house, I was able to see what Rumi saw in him: a man with a big heart.
Read more at location 4730

In this world, it is not similarities or regularities that take us a step forward, but blunt opposites. And all the opposites in the universe are present within each and every one of us. Therefore the believer needs to meet the unbeliever residing within. And the nonbeliever should get to know the silent faithful in him. Until the day one reaches the stage of Insan-i Kâmil, the perfect human being, faith is a gradual process and one that necessitates its seeming opposite: disbelief.
Read more at location 4880

This world is erected upon the principle of reciprocity. Neither a drop of kindness nor a speck of evil will remain unreciprocated. Fear not the plots, deceptions, or tricks of other people. If somebody is setting a trap, remember, so is God. He is the biggest plotter. Not even a leaf stirs outside God’s knowledge. Simply and fully believe in that. Whatever God does, He does beautifully.”
Read more at location 5203

“God is a meticulous clockmaker. So precise is His order that everything on earth happens in its own time. Neither a minute late nor a minute early. And for everyone without exception, the clock works accurately. For each there is a time to love and a time to die.”
Read more at location 5251

“It is never too late to ask yourself, ‘Am I ready to change the life I am living? Am I ready to change within?’ “Even if a single day in your life is the same as the day before, it surely is a pity. At every moment and with each new breath, one should be renewed and renewed again. There is only one way to be born into a new life: to die before death.” Read more at location 5297

While the parts change, the whole always remains the same. For every thief who departs this world, a new one is born. And every decent person who passes away is replaced by a new one. In this way not only does nothing remain the same but also nothing ever really changes.
Read more at location 5398

“A life without love is of no account. Don’t ask yourself what kind of love you should seek, spiritual or material, divine or mundane, Eastern or Western.... Divisions only lead to more divisions. Love has no labels, no definitions. It is what it is, pure and simple. “Love is the water of life. And a lover is a soul of fire! “The universe turns differently when fire loves water.”
Read more at location 5502

Michael T. Bee [ESI~Kindle]

Monday, September 14, 2015

Notes from '40 Rules of Love' by Elif Shafak

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

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