The Sunrise Ruby

In the early morning hour,just before the dawn, lover andBeloved wakeand take a drink of water.

She asks, “ Do you love me or yourself more?Really, tell the absolute truth.”

He says, “There’s nothing left of me.I’m like a ruby held up to the sunrise.Is it still a stone, or a world made of redness?It has no resistance to sunlight.”

This is how Hallaj said, I am God,and told the truth!

The ruby and the sunrise are one.Be courageous and discipline yourself.
Completely become hearing and ear,and wear the sun-ruby as earring.

Work. Keep digging your well. Don’t think about getting off from work.

Water is there somewhere.

Submit to a daily practice.Your loyalty to that is a ring on the door.

Keep knocking, and the joy inside willeventually open a window and look outto see who’s there.
– Rumi

Dear Love,
Who are you and what is your truth?
I am not a goal, a beginning, a middle, an end. I am not something you win. I am not something you lose. I am a constant. I am water – ever changing, ever the same. I am you in stillness and in motion. I am your skin, your tiny frail organs. People locate me in the heart because you live me, you breathe me, but I am not any one thing. I am every duality. I am not pretty, although I have moments of great beauty. I am complicated. I am not here to make you happy, although I am happiness. Finding me you find yourself as I see you – this does not mean that you are lost. I am the meaning of life. Your life cannot be meaningless because I exist whether you believe in me or not, whether you have had your heart broken and your beliefs betrayed. You think you have a supply of me, a supply that can be given away like gifts, like time, and therefore, you can be in danger of having your love be in deficit. I am the heart of the cactus. Peel away my flesh and I fill again with sweet nectar. I am not yours to give. I give through you, pass through you to others. You do not invent me anew every day. I can be renascent; I can take incarnations; but I have only one source. You are my truth. The ones you love are my truth. The ones who hurt you, who doubt you, who smother you are my truth. Didn’t I say that I am not always pretty? I am not always Venus. I am also the crone. You seek my validation and think my silence cruel. I do not need to validate myself. You are my face to the world. Love even when it hurts but love for love’s sake and not for the response of another person. Be love, not loving, not lovable, not lovelorn, not loveless. Being is my only manifestation.
– Chanel Anderson

In a Place
Beyond good and evil,
There is a field.
Meet me there.
– Rumi