A Morsel of Rumi’s Wisdom:
Conversations with Dr. Fariba Enteshari
By Dr. Fariba Enteshari
Edited by Miku Lenentine
I like how Rumi can appeal to us from 800 years ago and share with us.
To begin, I would like to share a verse from Mathnawi:
این جهان کوهست و فعل ما ندا
سوی ما آید نداها را صدا
This universe is the mountain and our actions are the echo.
The ripples of our voices will return to us eventually.
Rumi~ Source: Mathnawi I, 215
Translated by Dr. Fariba Enteshari
I would say, pay attention to what seeds you are taking into the womb of your spirit. What seeds are you taking within yourself and what are you offering to the world?
And then, the second part of this verse for us is:
the ripples of our actions, the ripples of our voices will return to us eventually.
I think, if we don’t read the whole Mathnawi, (Masnavi) Rumi’s master epic, and absorb all the gems of wisdom that Rumi has left for us, we can stick to just this one piece of wisdom.
That is because it is really talking about the energetic fields of who we are. Every recall, every action, every intention motivates the waves we send out to the world. That should get our attention, because if you want to shout out to the world, something nasty, or dark, this darkness sooner or later will catch up with us. I think these words are to caution us about the web of love that we live in, to be careful how to treat it.
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“…it’s really about letting a master teacher become
your midwife to give birth to the best version of who you are.”
What I love about Rumi is that he talks about the time on the earth…that spirit journeys to the earth— into a clay house, into a mass of body, matter. Spirit is just a visitor; body is not something that lasts and stays here forever. The spirit, itself, is represented by the sacred breath, the holy breath we are gifted with — the essence is everlasting.
Rumi’s teaching is all about focusing on the essential part of us and who we are and not the one that passes. It doesn’t recommend that we abuse our body. Actually, it talks about keeping all five physical senses clean and pure, as much as we can, because we are living in a world that’s polluted. So, we breathe in. And with breathing in, we take in everything.
We are often clumsy in our actions, especially when we don’t know better. But little by little, we can connect with our Holy Breath, to the Divine Love. Working on our essence, the Divine source, is our vocation. It is the great work of our life. Rumi describes that he is the midwife of us giving birth to the spirit. So, it’s really about letting a master teacher become your midwife to give birth to the best version of who you are. For doing this he tells us stories in the form of poetry.
That is what he left us in his book of enlightenment, which is Mathnawi. The Mathnawi is a long poem in the form of couplets. It is a love letter to the future generations 800 years forward.
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My own story with Rumi, begins with a traumatic experience I had as a youth during the Islamic Revolution in Iran. When I was in 11th grade my parents wanted me to be able to study and have a good education. They wished for me to leave by myself to pursue schooling in Germany. So, in late 1980, I landed in a country without knowing the language and waited for my parents to meet me there. Unfortunately, the borders closed and they never came.
For years, I was paralyzed with fears of losing my family since within weeks of my departure to Germany, our city was bombarded and I had no idea where my parents and siblings were. The trauma would likely have remained with me for much longer had I not gradually discovered the gems of wisdom that I now have.
Let me share a short story for you. When I was 11 years old, I decided that I wanted to create a language everybody could understand so there would be no war. My parents tried to convince me otherwise, but I had made up my mind. I wanted to create this language to end the fighting. I was, what you might say, obsessed with this for many years as a young person. It was not until many years later, after I left Germany and came to the United States to study at the University of Southern California, that I was introduced to Rumi. When I first heard about this, all the cells in my body started to vibrate. I realized in that moment; I didn’t need to invent a new language— all I needed was to learn the language of love that Rumi gathered so diligently! A language of Oneness already wrapped in verses of Rumi’s poetry.
The master teacher walked into my life in the right moment when I was truly heartbroken for my generation, and every other generation because we did not have access to this wisdom in our education. Why were these gems of wisdom not passed on to us as we grew up? Why do we have to analyze and synthesize everything and leave out the sum of the parts we have learned?
My scientific background was analytical; somehow, I missed learning to see the whole picture. For at least three decades of life, I was solely focused on taking things apart in order to understand them. This is good training for being lost in the leaves and never having the view of the whole jungle, the beauty of The Whole!
I missed knowing the stories of Rumi that taught me to see myself within a poem. Why can’t we pass along a story that makes us grow. When was the last time we took a couple of moments to see ourselves in the mirror of a poem or story? That is what Rumi does. Your soul doesn’t have to communicate with fancy words of science and psychology. All your soul needs to know is within the seeds of a story that can help to understand yourself.
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I think one of the best things we can do with our intention is to make time for our soul. Our intention is to hear our soul and the soul of the universe, the essence. Our intention should be understanding our Oneness and how we are not different in our needs; how we all seek love, and simply to be seen for who we really are.
To me, this is the true education.
That is how Rumi describes it. We come as spirit, as a free being, as the form of the breath of life into a clay house. Nobody gives us the manual for what we are supposed to be doing. No one tells us how to walk on our paths. This journey is all about the journey of the spirit. There is a story in the book of Mathnawi about the mother Mary, going to visit her cousin, Elizabeth. She walks in, as an unmarried woman across the threshold of Elizabeth’s house, and Elizabeth welcomes Mary and says, “I felt the life within me bowing to the life within you.” This story is an indication to us that we are impregnated with the spirit and that spirit is connected to others and everything else.
That’s why it doesn’t work to ignore our environment.
That’s why it doesn’t work to ignore ourselves.
That’s why it doesn’t work to ignore our lovers.
That’s why it doesn’t work to ignore our children.
We are all connected, one breath, one Spirit.
We are privileged to be so. That’s the message of love — the soul within me is connected to the soul within you. The universe is the mountain and whatever ripples and vibrates from us should be in the support of this Oneness.
This teaching would have worked better than medicine for my PTSD at 18-years-old! If only I could have relied on the wisdom in a few stories then maybe I could have reflected objectively on the dire situation that I was in. One thing I needed to make sense of as a young person was the survival guilt. I needed to realize that there was a reason that I left right before our city was attacked. The reason could have become an aid to my healing. Stories can teach us about life’s ups and downs, how one can follow the stream in the journey of the soul.
So, my advice is to make time for breathing and sitting in a corner. Find your own soul room. Make time to understand your own psyche and spirit. Do this a number of times a day … like “tap, tap tap” how am I really doing?
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If I have one piece of advice from Rumi, it is this first step: You have to be honest with yourself, and then make time to check-in. If you’re honest with yourself, just keep checking in. Everything needs practice. Our world teaches us about masks. You mask yourself over and over. That’s why a lot of illness needs peeling away, like an onion. The masks we wear are not the masks we necessarily choose. These are the masks that society chooses for us. Stay naked in your truth.
There is an expression from Rumi, “the whole world is talking to you but you are not listening.” I think, and that’s not different than what I mentioned before, if I would conceptualize for us the whole book of enlightenment into one word it would be to connect.
Connection is not possible if we don’t connect to ourselves and if we don’t listen, we cannot connect. I think we have to do this on a daily basis, we have to, even if it is only for a few seconds. This is a good start.
For example, maybe you are having a bad day, frantically running around, everything is going wrong. Just take five seconds to breathe and connect. Five seconds. Five deep breaths in, holding for five seconds and then breathing out five seconds. And then repeat this, like a checking-in time, or a little soul moment. I think it all goes to the soul room. The reflection is there, the education is there. We need to train ourselves that this life is all about connecting, connecting, connecting.
And then when we do that enough,
we have a chance to hear others,
we have a chance to hear the world,
we have a chance to hear the wind,
we have a chance to recognize the waves,
we have a connection again with the One-ness.
The practice doesn’t need to be really hard. It can be as easy as five breaths. We are practicing connection and to be in the flow is love. Love is the solvent. That’s coming from by biochemistry background (chuckles). Love is the great solvent. It can take in everything and dissolve it into love. Rumi says love is the medium. For me Love is the great solvent, and connecting to this needs practice and not giving up.
Just one moment of connection, even one second, it can come in and begin to help. It solves the ties of our nerves and hopefully becomes a good habit, like breathing in and out. For the universe is the mountain and your actions are the echo. Pay attention to what seeds you take into the womb of your spirit. Pay attention to what seeds you are taking within yourself and what are you offering to the world.
*Mathnawi, Rumi’s masterpiece, also known as Masnavi.
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