You can always count on Rumi.
Thanks Quanita Roberson for sharing.
Guest House
Rumi — so often quoted. The 13th century Persian poet.
The Guest House is one of my favorites. For the temporariness that it points to, while at the same time, casting a glance at the infinite in the unseen.
In any of the work I get to do, I feel it is done best when attending simultaneously to what is directly in front of us, and, to the infinite context within which that “in front of us” is wrapped.
Thanks Karen Winkel for reminding me of this.
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The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
— Jellaludin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks
Two Kinds of Intelligence
Further to my post yesterday about kinds of expertise, I love this from the great Persian Poet, Rumi.
There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.
There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbok. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from the outside to inside
through the conduits of plumbing-learning.
The second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.