When you don\u2019t lose yourself, the beloved is like a thorn<\/p>\n
When you lose yourself, the beloved is the purest gold<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When you don\u2019t lose yourself, a fly can fell you<\/p>\n
When you lose yourself, elephants fall before you<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When you don\u2019t lose yourself, you\u2019re a cloud of grief<\/p>\n
When you lose yourself, mist and fog parts for you<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When you don\u2019t lose yourself, the beloved turns away<\/p>\n
When you lose yourself, the sweetest wine comes your way<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When you don\u2019t lose yourself, you\u2019re as dispirited as autumn<\/p>\n
When you lose yourself, your January is like spring<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
All your restlessness is out of your desire for stillness<\/p>\n
Just desire restlessly, then, love will fill and still you<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
All your unhealthiness is out of your desire for health,<\/p>\n
Just abandon health, then, even poison will heal you\u2026<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This ode\/ghazal<\/em> in which Mowlana Jalaleddin Rumi speaks of the differences between life when \u201cyou lose yourself\u201d and life when \u201cyou don\u2019t lose yourself\u201d is one of the jewels of the Div\u0101n-e Shams<\/em>, and you would be hard pressed to find another ghazal <\/em>that compares to it in terms of revelations about the secrets of wisdom and the riches of vision.\u00a0 It is as if, here, all in one place, Rumi has bequeathed to us the quintessence of his mystical and transcendental experiences; divulged his inmost, spiritual discoveries;\u00a0 and laid bare the fruits of his ardent, mystical journey.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It is generally assumed that in the Masnavi<\/em>, Rumi is a teacher and that in the Div\u0101n-e Kabir<\/em>, he is a besotted lover. There, he complies with the code of conduct of the classroom and, here, he abandons himself to the \u201cmisconduct\u201d of love; for, \u201cthe conduct of love is misconduct through and through\u201d. This is a correct assessment and anyone who has had the good fortune to read these spiritual and inspirational works will know that, in these two tomes, he is faced with two Rumi\u2019s: the sage and the lover. It is not for nothing that the Masnavi<\/em> has been called Hes\u0101mi-N\u0101meh<\/em> (The Book of Hesameddin), whilst the Div\u0101n-e Kabir<\/em> is known as the Div\u0101n-e Shams <\/em>or Shams-N\u0101meh<\/em>. In the nightly sessions in which the Masnavi <\/em>was born, Hesameddin would sit like a pupil. Pen in hand and eyes glued to the teacher\u2019s lips, he would listen to the master\u2019s teachings and put them to paper.\u00a0 In Rumi\u2019s own words, in the Masnavi<\/em>, he behaved like an astute ruler, who thought about combining form and meaning. And, notwithstanding his inebriation, he minded his conduct and imparted the fine points of morality and religion like a dignified teacher. And if, now and then, in mid-sentence, his thoughts strayed to Shams\u2014robbing his mind of concentration, his heart of serenity, his words of composure and his soul of tranquillity\u2014he would hastily give himself a shake, bite his tongue, swallow the impassioned words and bellow to himself to stop thinking and speaking of Shams-e Tabrizi, \u201cElse, there\u2019ll be ruin and disgrace\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But, in the Div\u0101n-e Kabir<\/em>, this same Rumi becomes a great madman, who is robbed by love of the serenity to teach like a sage; who looks down on the ladder of \u201cthe way\u201d because he has reached the rooftop of \u201cthe truth\u201d; who, like a piece of gold, has become unneedful of the science and practice of alchemy; who reveals secrets so frenziedly as to force Hallaj to call for him to be hanged:\u00a0 \u201cThe people hanged Hallaj for his insinuations \/ Hallaj will have me hanged for my frenzied revelations\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rumi, who\u2014judging by his works\u2014was very fond of stories involving animals, was well-versed in the story of the lion and the deer; a lion that was so awe-inspiring and terrifying as to make the deer faint and fade away, so that nothing remained of it but a pale shape. The deer forgets its own being and is lost in the lion\u2019s being.\u00a0 It is as if the deer is so brimming with the lion as to be empty of itself, and the lion fills the deer\u2019s emptied mould.\u00a0 From then on, the deer that has \u201clost itself\u201d becomes a lion that has \u201cnot lost itself\u201d and behaves in a lion-like way.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In fact, the lion was no one other than Shams-e Tabrizi and the deer was no one other than Jalaleddin Rumi. The story of the deer and the lion was the tale of Rumi\u2019s own encounter with Shams, who made him lose his senses and \u201close himself\u201d. And it was in this \u201closing himself\u201d and losing his senses that he crazily composed the ghazals<\/em>, which told the story of his madness and his love.\u00a0 He was transformed into another lion and another Shams; nay, a thousand Shams-e Tabrizis dangled from each hair on his head. (Aflaki\u2019s Munaqib<\/em>)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Div\u0101n-e Kabir<\/em> is the product of those rare moments when you lose yourself. And although respect for a teacher\u2019s code of conduct is not to be found there, the secrets of love are hidden therein. The lion that the deer of Rumi\u2019s soul saw was not a life- devouring lion, but a life-giving one. And it was this new life that poured new meanings into old words and built the world anew.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From this prelude, I want to make my way to explaining the ghazal <\/em>that I mentioned at the beginning\u2014which is a most thorough elucidation of \u201closing yourself\u201d. But, first, I can\u2019t resist citing the following two verses from Div\u0101n-e Shams<\/em>, which is a soulful description of a brave soul who saw a life-giving lion and gained new life from it: \u201cOur lion is a rare specimen and far from devouring a deer \/ It breathes into a roe\u2019s shape and makes it bound and leap \/ It\u2019s out of my love for it that I took up the lute \/ It cries out my feelings for me, as I sit stunned and mute\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n Why does Rumi say, in his ghazal<\/em>, that when you \u201close yourself\u201d, you find contentment, sturdiness, joy, the vitality of spring and companionship with the beloved; whereas when you \u201cdon\u2019t lose yourself\u201d, you feel sadness, weakness, wretchedness, autumnal lassitude and separation from the beloved?\u00a0 What about all the other paradoxes that he describes: The tranquillity that you find when abandon tranquillity; the purposelessness that you feel when you pursue an aim; the unpleasantness that stems from seeking pleasant things; and the beloved\u2019s coldness when you long for its warmth?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If, in the realm of theory, we define \u201closing yourself\u201d as \u201cheedlessness and fearlessness\u201d, this might answer some of our questions, but what virtue is there in ignorant, idle heedlessness?\u00a0 Perhaps sagacious unconcern\/not caring may be nearer the mark: someone who cares about happiness is afraid of being unhappy and is saddened by any decrease in happiness; someone who longs for spring dreads autumn; someone who values disciples\u2019 praise is hurt by their derision; and anyone who is trapped by these likes and dislikes is open to weakness and wretchedness, loses all courage, is ensnared by anguish, grows sad for fear of sorrow, and flees from one trap into another.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Although the idea of being contented, unconcerned, untroubled and unencumbered is very sweet and comforting, it raises two questions: First, how can gain and loss, joy and sorrow, life and death, purposefulness and purposelessness become equal so that neither side of the equation is preferable to the other?\u00a0 What would motivate desiring and movement then?\u00a0 And is the comfort of contentment not pleasurable in itself and is it possible to forego this pleasure? Secondly, why should such a moral demeanour and such a noble person be described as someone who has \u201clost himself\u201d. And is \u201closing yourself\u201d the same thing as being an unconcerned nonconformist or is it its begetter, and if it is its begetter, what is it composed of? Setting all these considerations aside, in the ghazal<\/em> in question, although Rumi seems to turn his back on all the things that people desire, he lauds desiring. In other words, he doesn\u2019t equate desiring and indifference. On the contrary, he asks us to desire restlessly and to adore the beloved\u2019s cruelty, and this is<\/em> desiring and caring, and it is incompatible with an absolute absence of desire.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the Golest\u0101n<\/em>, Sa\u2019di, Rumi\u2019s contemporary, tells the tale of a dervish who is asked, \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d \u201cNot to want anything,\u201d he replies. But this is clearly not what Rumi is talking about. Perhaps, what Rumi is saying is closer to Att\u0101r\u2019s words when he said: \u201cPoverty\u2019s cap is adorned with three abandonments \/ Abandoning this world, abandoning the next world, and abandoning abandoning\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Being a dervish rests on three pillars: Turning away from this world, turning away from the next world and turning away from turning away.\u00a0 In other words, not fighting desires, but transcending desires and finding another way of being. Isn\u2019t this what a dervish\u2019s \u201cnonbeing\u201d means? As Rumi put it, \u201cThere\u2019s no dervish anywhere, the speaker said \/ and if there is a dervish, he isn\u2019t\u201d.\u00a0 This idea was also expressed by Sheikh Abolhassan Kharaqani when he said: \u201cA Sufi is someone who isn\u2019t.\u201d In other words, a dervish is someone who is neither in this world, nor in the next world, nor concerned about abandoning this world or the next. It is a kind of lover\u2019s freedom that H\u0101fez, too, discovered: \u201cI\u2019m the servant of love; free of both worlds\u201d.\u00a0 Be that as it may, even if we equate \u201closing yourself\u201d with abandoning abandoning, we must still take on board the idea of desiring, which Rumi hailed and acclaimed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We must also not equate \u201closing yourself\u201d with alienation, which means mistaking an other for yourself.\u00a0 Alienation is \u201cnot losing yourself\u201d combined with not knowing yourself. And it goes without saying that this is furlongs away from \u201closing yourself\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And we must not equate \u201cforgetting your soul\u201d with \u201closing yourself\u201d either. \u201cForgetting your soul\u201d is a reprehensible condition which, according to the Qur\u2019an\u2019s teaching, results from forgetting God: \u201cBe not as those who forgot God, and so, He caused them to forget their souls.\u201d (Hashr, 19)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The same can be said of the term diminution or \u201closs\u201d, which is the opposite of robustness and heftiness and conveys a sense of being insubstantial and being \u201cat a loss\u201d. This is a long way away from \u201closing yourself\u201d in the laudable sense. According to the Qur\u2019an\u2019s teachings, a human being (who is by nature pure and good) loses something of himself and becomes thinner when he sins, and he weighs less when measured on the scale of justice and truth, unless he compensates for the lack and the thinness by having faith and doing good deeds. (\u201cSurely Man is in the way of loss, save those who believe and do righteous deeds.\u201d Al-Asr)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Now, let us see whether \u201cself-regard\u201d is akin to \u201cnot losing yourself\u201d and \u201cdisregard for yourself\u201d is related to \u201closing yourself\u201d. Rumi extracted this relationship in the most eloquent way in the tale of the grammarian and the sea captain in Book I of the Masnavi<\/em>. After the grammarian had irritated the sea captain by telling him that he\u2019d wasted his life since he\u2019d never studied grammar, the sea captain warned the grammarian that the ship was approaching a whirlpool and that, in such circumstances, only people who had studied the \u201cgrammar\u201d or the method of self-effacement could proceed with confidence.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It would seem that \u201cthe method of self-effacement\u201d is, in effect, a lesson in \u201closing yourself\u201d, abandoning haughtiness and self-esteem, and practising death. Of course, not focusing on yourself has a moral sense, which is humility and modesty, and it has a mystical sense, which is to see one\u2019s self as a veil and to strive to step out of the way.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It may be fairly straightforward to see how arrogance and conceit\u2014also sometimes known as \u201cme-ness\u201d\u2014are akin to \u201cnot losing yourself\u201d. Someone who has \u201cnot lost himself\u201d is preoccupied with \u201cme\u201d. He sees others as \u201cnobodies\u201d and sees himself as \u201ceverybody\u201d. And this bloated kind of \u201cme\u201d is effectively an illness and it is also a source of illness.\u00a0 In the Masnavi<\/em>, Rumi tells the tale of a lover who knocks on the door of the beloved. When the beloved asks, \u201cWho is it?\u201d, the lover replies: \u201cMe.\u201d This \u201cme\u201d is enough to make him deserving of being rejected and sent away.\u00a0 The story continues until all his many \u201cme\u2019s\u201d burn away. Then, he returns to the beloved\u2019s house. This time, when the beloved asks, \u201cWho is it?\u201d, he replies, \u201cHere, too, it is you, my darling heart.\u201d And, so, he is allowed into the house by the beloved, who says: \u201cSince you\u2019re me, come in; otherwise, two me\u2019s don\u2019t fit in one house.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In Rumi\u2019s view, anyone who has a \u201cme\u201d and a \u201cself\u201d, in truth, has not one \u201cme\u201d but a different \u201cme\u201d and a different \u201cself\u201d at each moment. In Rumi\u2019s words, such a person has \u201ca thousands me\u2019s and we\u2019s\u201d. And it is in the chaos of all these \u201cme\u2019s\u201d that he forgets who he is.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For Rumi, at least one meaning of \u201closing yourself\u201d is casting away these \u201cmultiple-selves\u201d and arriving at \u201ca single self\u201d. And although this contains a cure to haughtiness and self-esteem and the method of self-effacement within it, it is not identical to this kind of moral improvement. It is a movement in your being, not in your morality; it is a vertical leap, not a horizontal one; and it is deliverance from polytheism, not from grime.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Killing your appetites or combating your appetites may seem close to the idea of \u201closing yourself\u201d, but it is, of course, not identical to it, and far from being a purging of the self, it is a preening of the self. And although this cleaning and preening of the self is morally laudable, it is far away indeed from \u201closing yourself\u201d, which amounts to transcending beauty and ugliness. Of course, Rumi believes that understanding God\u2019s unity requires that you part with your appetites; that a mind that is sullied by bodily desires is incapable of understanding the Transcendent. So, he is of the view that commanding people to combat their appetites on the path to understanding unity does not contravene God\u2019s compassion.\u00a0 But all these battles fall within the realm of learning and morality, which concern the good and bad effects of \u201cthe self”; they do not cut down to the bone to remove \u201cthe self\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 * \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We said that, on the way to \u201closing yourself\u201d and arriving at the fruits of this condition\u2014i.e., contentment, sturdiness, joy and beauty\u2014the least that you must do is to strive for \u201ca single self\u201d, escape division and dispersal, become \u201cwhole\u201d, drive away the devil and greet the angel of glad tidings. Now, assuming that \u201cmultiple selves\u201d have been cast away and the \u201csingle self\u201d has been achieved (which is possible by turning away from bodily appetites, reducing desires, shunning vices, acquiring virtues, talking less, eating less, sleeping less, etc.), what steed will allow you to make the journey from \u201ca single self\u201d to \u201closing yourself\u201d? How, in the realm of theory and practice, is it possible to achieve the contradictory concoction of \u201ca self that has lost itself\u201d? Logically, there are three possible ways:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1. You must cease to exist\u2014in a totally non-metaphorical sense\u2014and succumb to death. This is not at all a seemly course and it is not an acceptable answer, because the purpose of \u201closing yourself\u201d is for you to remain who you are while achieving the state of \u201closing yourself\u201d. And by destroying yourself you destroy your capital and make it impossible for you to strive towards perfection.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2. You must become bewitched by and disappear into another and put him in your place. This amounts to losing yourself, but it is a loathsome kind of losing yourself. This is the alienation that we spoke of earlier and it involves giving yourself up and receiving an \u201calien self\u201d and mistaking the alien for yourself.\u00a0 This is a combination of surrendering yourself and not knowing yourself; it means spending a lifetime in estrangement, entrusting the house of your being to a stranger,\u00a0 working under the yoke of another and playing the role of someone else. \u201cLove of faces\/forms\u201d is, in Rumi\u2019s view, this kind of estrangement and alienation. You\u2019ve lost yourself but you\u2019ve failed to remain who you are.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 3. You have to become empty of yourself and put someone in your place who is \u201cmore you than you\u201d and \u201cmore yourself than yourself\u201d. In this way, you both \u201close yourself\u201d and remain who you are.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rumi\u2019s works testify in a hundred different ways that he travelled this third course and that what he meant by \u201closing yourself\u201d was not drunkenness and heedlessness, or alienation and estrangement, or self-denial and self-flagellation, or humility and meekness; although humility, selflessness, courage, decency, even-temperedness and sagacious unconcern are some of the sweet fruits of \u201closing yourself\u201d in the mystical sense.\u00a0 Rumi recommended loving someone who is \u201cmore yourself than yourself\u201d so that when it fills your being, it both uproots your \u201cself\u201d and replaces it with someone richer and more fitting.\u00a0 Rumi did not recommend or aspire to an absolute emptying of the self. He also wanted to be filled; being filled by someone who also carries along the \u201cself\u201d, but at a higher and richer level.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rumi believed that a lover should be empty of himself, but filled with the beloved; a beloved who bears, contains and completes love. A beloved who both kills the lover and brings him to life. Both destroys him and perfects him. And this was why he associated \u201closing yourself\u201d with \u201clove\u201d. He considered this to be the reward of a lover who has lost his heart to a superior beloved who is \u201cmore me than me\u201d and \u201cmore myself than myself\u201d.\u00a0 Quite simply put: \u201cThe life of lovers lies in death \/ you\u2019ll only find your heart when you lose it\u201d. In other words, it is only when you lose your heart that you become aware of it; it is only when you fall in love that you become aware that you had a heart.\u00a0 And this happens when the heart joins \u201ca heart that is more of a heart\u201d, and the self combines with \u201ca self that is more of a self\u201d and the soul surrenders to \u201ca soul that is more of a soul\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So, the reason why love is the cure for haughtiness and conceit, and the reason why it is our Plato and our Galen is because, first, it turns dispersal into wholeness and multiple-selves into a single self, and, then, it entrusts this self to \u201cmore of a self\u201d, the greatest blessing of which is \u201closing yourself\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the tale of the lover from Bukhara and Sadr-e Jah\u0101n, after the lover has been able to negotiate all the impediments, obstacles and rebukes and, finally, reaches the beloved, the first thing that he hears from the beloved is that he should not fear that \u201closing himself\u201d means being emptied; quite the reverse, it means being filled with \u201cmore of a self\u201d. Hence, it is not a losing but a winning; it is to give copper and receive gold.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the tale of B\u0101yazid, what Rumi tells us is that the gracious pauper had been so filled with God that, in that state of losing himself, he made claims to godliness: \u201cWhen the phoenix of \u2018losing himself\u2019 soared high \/ Bayazid began to speak and said: \/ There\u2019s no one in my cloak but God \/ Why do you keep looking for Him in the sky?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And most beautiful of all is the allegory of the hen who invited a camel to her house: \u201cWhen the camel the hen\u2019s house entered \/\u00a0 the roof fell in and the house crumpled\u201d. Thus, the house is emptied of the hen and filled with the camel.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In a sense, \u201closing yourself\u201d is a misleading term because it seems to convey a sense of emptiness and vacuity. This misleading appearance is deliberate. It ensures that the angel of glad tidings\u2019 message does not fall into the wrong ears. It is: \u201cSo that Our sweetens in this world and the next \/ is hidden in a veil of sourness\u201d.\u00a0 But it is clear to the worthy recipients of the angel\u2019s message that that perdition is a veil for being, that that vacuity is a veil for the sublime and that that \u201closing yourself\u201d is, in fact, \u201cbecoming yourself\u201d; nay, \u201cbecoming even more yourself\u201d. The secret of this transformation is expressed by the philosopher\u2019s stone of love, which turns knowledge into the evident.\u00a0 It was not for nothing that Rumi was hostile to his \u201cself\u201d and found death as sweet as honey and sugar: \u201cWe\u2019re the foes of our selves and the beloved is the one who kills us \/ Drowning in the ocean, the waves come and kills us \/ It is with the sweetest pleasure that we relinquish our lives \/ For it is with halva and sugar that the king kills us\u2026\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It would seem that \u201closing yourself\u201d must be understood in two ways: impoverishment and empowerment. \u201cLosing yourself\u201d as impoverishment means being emptied or becoming an \u201cother\u201d; whereas \u201closing yourself\u201d as empowerment means becoming \u201cmore yourself\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n So far, we have explained the meaning of \u201closing yourself\u201d as empowerment, as well as the liberating role of love. We also explained why this \u201closing yourself\u201d makes you strong as an elephant and a lion, and as well-tempered as the spring and the beloved\u2019s sweet wine. Heedlessness brings delusory strength, but being filled with the grand love of a grand beloved creates grandeur. Rumi viewed prophets\u2019 stern countenance in this same light: \u201cAnyone who has the sun behind him \/ Will have a stern countenance without shame or fear\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But a few points still remain to be said, with which it may be useful to adorn and conclude this article: First, there is the notion of bewilderment. When a grander self replaces \u201cthe self\u201d so that \u201cyou lose yourself\u201d, this \u201closing yourself\u201d goes hand-in-hand with bewilderment. Bewilderment is neither stupour nor fretfulness; it happens when a camel steps into the house of a hen. It is the outcome of the crumbling of the house of \u201cthe self\u201d, because a guest who is more hefty and \u201cmore of a self\u201d has entered it. All mystical, faith-related experiences are intertwined with bewilderment. And this bewilderment makes not only your being but also your speech tremble and quake.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n On the noble Prophet\u2019s Ascension, too, Rumi spoke about the bewilderment that strikes the chosen few. When Gabriel is unable to accompany the Prophet any further, the Prophet, alone, drives his steed towards God (and all of this has a mythical and metaphorical aspect). And bewilderment upon bewilderment follows.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Even more than this, Rumi considered it religion\u2019s task to evoke bewilderment and he believed that anyone who has not arrived at a bewildering experience (which is the product of losing yourself) is not a true believer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Secondly, there is the notion of formlessness and definition-lessness. Bewilderment results from encountering that which has no definition, form or name. What we can describe and name is within the grasp of our reason, but that which escapes definition bewilders reason. As long as an individual has \u201cnot lost himself\u201d, he is in the realm of definition. But when you \u201close yourself\u201d, you arrive at the formless and the definition-less. And it is the realm of \u201cthe definition-less life-land\u201d that gives rise to bewilderment.\u00a0 It is as if, before the definition-less, there was death and, after it, there is life.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And this definition-less, \u201clost self\u201d, who sits beyond all definitions, cannot define and describe itself either. It does not fit in any mould and does not match any name or designation. This nameless, definition-less, \u201clost self\u201d is, in fact, the nonconformist, whom H\u0101fez spoke of\u2014who has abandoned all comforts and attachments. And although he mingles with all \u201cfaces\u201d or \u201cforms\u201d, he does not stop at or fit in any face or form. He is \u201cthe servant of love\u201d and \u201cfree of both worlds\u201d. Because he is free of his \u201cself\u201d. This is a desirable love. And, so, \u201cFrom desiring, I shall never desist, until I arrive at my quest\u201d. And although love has been described as a blessing, the saying also goes that you must \u201cSeek love!\u201d It is when you stay still within \u201cthe self\u201d that you become restless. So, be restless for love so that you can \u201close yourself\u201d, for this is the font of every stillness and every quest.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Translated from the Persian by Nilou Mobasser<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When you don\u2019t lose yourself, the beloved is like a thorn When you lose yourself, the beloved is the purest gold When you don\u2019t lose yourself, a fly can fell you When you lose yourself, elephants fall before you When you don\u2019t lose yourself, you\u2019re a cloud of grief When you lose yourself, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/drsoroush.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/drsoroush.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/drsoroush.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drsoroush.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drsoroush.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/drsoroush.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/drsoroush.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drsoroush.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drsoroush.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}