Every moment and place says put this design in your carpet- Rumi

I love Rumi. I read his words and I know he has touched, and wholeheartedly desired to be completely absorbed, by the Divine, which he calls the Beloved.  We are fortunate he was able to express this spiritual reunion with words.

Take the line above:  Every moment and place says put this design in your carpet.  Each one of us may interpret this different.  What I hear is an intense desire and perhaps a plea for us to pay attention to our moments for they are urging us to be competely intimate with them.  Let’s not, it begs, let our moments pass us by without allowing them to make a conscious imprint upon our souls; for our moments are making an imprint, but to be a conscious partner of their making is the ecstasy of life.

Sometimes when I walk through the woods by my house I listen to Rumi poetry spoken by Coleman Barks. As I listen I am moved by the words, and the sun setting through the clouds and coming through the trees.  I want to raise up my hands, throw back my head, start whirling and worship the ground, the moon, the sun, the trees.  I can feel this urge in every fiber of my being, but then there is this warning, which halts my spiritual urge to worship and stunts my spiritual growth.  The warning says, what if someone sees you. If they do they will think you are crazy. 

When the warning happens, I feel frustration and loss that we do not live in a culture which support such spontaneous worship.  I feel frustration and loss that an essential part of myself has been covered up with restrictions and judgments.  

Recently I was with friends and I had an overwhelming urge to move my body in an awkward position. I wanted my head to fall toward the ground, as I extended my legs up along the back of the couch. I told them of my urge, and very nonchalantly they said, “Do it.”  I felt a little foolish at first, but doing so satisfied the urge to move energy which was stagnating inside of me.   I understood how important it is to follow one’s urges, which is something Rumi also said.

How can we evolve if we do not satisfy our urges, or at least realize them and consciously choose to or not to?  The act of choosing not to, if the urge is destructive, can also evolve us. But to not at least pay attention to our urges means we are stagnating, and essentially not telling the truth of our minds, bodies and souls. 

For instance if I had not followed the urge to move my body in that awkward position I would be denying some truth that I am not even fully aware of.  Had I not, I would not have learned the lesson of the importance of following our soul urges.  By following these promptings from our soul, we become more and more intimate with our selves, our higher and truer selves.  We begin little by little to live our authentic lives and not the one which comes from the culture of shoulds and should nots:   Someone will think you are crazy.  You will look stupid.  You might get hurt. 

For the past several weeks, I have had urges to say I love you to my mom. To move past the pain and betrayal and to just love her. I have yet to follow this urge, but I know my Soul is speaking to me.  My soul wants to let go and forgive and knows by these small simple acts I can move forward in love, and not only with my mother, but within all of my relationships.

She is the primary relationship which defines all the others. It has greatly defined my marriage. Just today after talking to her on the phone, I started to feel ambivalent about my husband again because she taught me not to trust people, especially men. But I am moving past this because I want to be intimate with not only him, but with every person, place and thing no matter what the cost, which for a long time has been betrayal.  Betrayal is an illusion.

I want every person, place, experience- every moment to put its design on my soul and I want to feel it. I want to experience it. I want to be completely used up and fully expressed like a lemon that is made into juice by the time I leave this place.  This is an urge of the soul. 

There is much to break through to get to this place of union.  Many restrictions and barriers. As if stuck in a prison, but not just stuck within by its bars, but stuck into its floor layer upon layer of tethered rind, which ensnares us deeper just when we think we are getting loose.  The snares get tighter and the urge to be free and unified is so fierce we keep fighting and struggling until at once, and suddenly… we are free.  

Begin to pay attention to not only the larger urgings, but the smaller ones as well. We don’t need to do something drastic like quit our ‘dead end’ jobs or relationships. Maybe we need to listen to the urge to smile at work, or give our spouse a kiss when they walk through the door. Maybe we need to embrace what we think is imprisoning us.  

Think of the scene in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone where Harry, Hermione and Ron fall into a pit of what looks like snakes. The more they resist and fight the snakes, the tighter they grasp.  However with ease, trust and breath they easily slide through the snares and are free- at least from that challenge. 

Whatever the urges are, pay attention to them. It is the urging of your Soul which wants you to be free. To be who you really are, and not be who you are not.

Namaste, 

Nikki